ground zero: the nuclear demolition of the world trade centre

Ground Zero:The Nuclear Demolition of

The World Trade Centre

Incontrovertible Proof that the World Trade Centre was destroyed by Underground Nuclear Explosions

by

William Tahil

, B.A.

Ground Zero: the point on the ground directly under the explosion of a nuclear weapon.

WTC

01-

02

WTC

01-

03

WTC

01-

14

WTC

01-

15

WTC

01-

16

WTC

01-

21

WTC

01-

22

WTC

01-

25

WTC

01-

27

WTC

01-

28

WTC

01-

20

WTC

01-

36

75

575

1075

1575

2075

2575

3075

3575

4075

part

s pe

r mill

ion

Barium ppm

Strontiumppm

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of BariumConcentration of Barium vsvs Strontium Strontium

Source: USGS (Not including Girder Coatings)

William Tahil asserts his moral right to be identifiedas the author of this work.

Copyright

William Tahil 2006. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.

This report is dedicated to

All those who are striving to keep the Light

of Truth, Liberty and Justice

Alive during these Dark Hours

Salus populi suprema lex esti

New York September 17th 2001

Radioactive Dust Chokes the Air of Manhattan

From the Front Cover of the Sierra Club report “Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero”

Ground Zero I

Contents

Preface

1 Introduction 1

2 Sources of Information 3

3 Evidence of Radioactive Fallout 5

Introduction 5

The Chemistry of Nuclear Fission 5

Isotopes 5Fission and Decay Pathways 7Decay Mechanisms 9Half Life 12

The USGS Data 13

Sample Collection Procedure 13Chemical Analysis 14Notes on these Tables 21

The Major Elements 22

The Trace Elements 23

Overall Impression 23Barium and Strontium 24Zinc 29Sodium and Potassium 32Other Trace Elements 35The Girder Coatings 51Uranium and Thorium 54Conclusion 56

The USGS Interpretation 57

Discussion and Analysis 61

The Fallout Characteristics 61WTC 01-16 and 01-02 62Permitted Barium and Strontium Concentrations 62The Enhanced Radiation Bomb 63

Conclusion 71

II Ground Zero

Contents

4 The Seismographic Evidence 73

Introduction 73

What are Seismic Waves 73

What is the Difference betweenan Earthquake and an Explosion? 74

P Waves vs S Waves 74Surface Wave Pattern 76

Seismographic Analysis of the WTC Collapse 76

Further Commentary on The WTC Seismogram 82

Comparison with Nuclear Test Seismograms 85

Discriminating Between Explosions and Earthquakes 87

Energy Balance 88

Gravitational Potential Energy of WTC 88Seismic Magnitude and TNT Equivalent 91Miscellaneous Points 93

Summary 94

Conclusion 94

Appendix: Extracts from Articles and Web Sites 95

5 Residual Heat and Aerosol Information 97

Introduction 97

The Residual Heat of the Rubble 97

The AVIRIS Hot Spots 98Eyewitness Account by Bechtel 100The Pools of Molten Steel 101UC Davis - Broiled and Superheated Rubble 104Caustic Dust 105Energy Comparison 106Other Caustic Sources 107Conclusion 107

University of California at Davis Aerosol Analysis 108

Stainless Steel 112Diphenyl 113

Appendix: Extracts from Articles and Web Sites 113

N.Y. Air Hazards Found EPA Assurances Contradicted by UCD Scientists 115

New Seismic Data Refutes Official WTC Explanation 116Letter from Mr. Mark Loizeaux to Mr. Gary Bryan of the Libertypost.org Website 119New York Visit Reveals Extent of WTC Disaster 119How Strong Is The Evidence For A Controlled Demolition? 120

Ground Zero III

Contents

6 The Blast Signature 121

Introduction 121

The Nuclear Blast Sequence 124

Conclusion 125

The Effects of an UndergroundNuclear Explosion 126

Pulverisation of the WTC 128Pyroclastic Flow 129

Conclusion 130

Appendix: Extracts from Articlesand Web Sites 130

Explosions in the Basement 130Comments by Mark Loizeaux 134Baltimore Blasters 134

7 The China Syndrome 139

Introduction 139

The SADM 140

Evidence for a Core Meltdown 141

The WTC Light Memorial 141Residual Heat and Molten Steel 144Quantity of Fallout 144The Explosive Power of a Critical Reactor 146Conclusion 148

The China Syndrome 149

Loss of Coolant Accident 149Transient 151The 1993 WTC Truck Bomb 153

Evidence of Anomalous Facilities 154

Evidence of Underground Facilities 154Evidence of Advanced Technology 155

The WTC Memorial 156

Effects of A Nuclear Explosion on New York 157

Historical Radiation ExposureExperiments 159

8 Conclusion 161

Appendix A:The Complexity of Fission 163

Quantity of Uranium in Reactor Core 164

IV Ground Zero

Contents

Ground Zero i

Preface

On the 11th September 2001 at 09:59 and 10:28 EDT, two enormousexplosions pulverised to dust the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centrein New York. The 400 metre high towers disintegrated in a volcaniceruption of dust and rubble before the eyes of the entire world.

The buildings were “smulched into a smouldering pit” wheretemperatures remained so hot that soil, concrete and glass continued tobe vaporised for over 6 weeks.

Never before or since in the history of modern construction has a steelframed building collapsed due to a fire.

In the aftermath of the collapse, a team of US Geological Surveyscientists collected samples of dust from 35 locations in LowerManhattan where it came to rest from the enormous pyroclastic dustcloud that enveloped the city.

In the dust, they found high levels of chemical elements that had nobusiness being there. Extremely rare and toxic elements. Elementssuch as Barium, Strontium, Thorium, Cerium, Lanthanum, Yttrium. Evensome elements that only exist in radioactive form.

These elements are forensic evidence of the event that caused thedisintegration of the towers. They form a distinctive hallmark andsignature of a certain well known chemical process.

Nuclear Fission.

What was the enormous source of energy that caused the destruction ofthe WTC? It was not a few thousand gallons of jet fuel. It was not even afew thousand pounds of conventional explosives. It was a NuclearExplosion. Two Nuclear Explosions.

But even more than that, these were not just atomic bombs. Theexplosions were caused by the deliberate core meltdown of twoclandestine nuclear reactors buried deep beneath the towers.

ii Ground Zero

Preface

The true perpetrators of this heinous act of terrorism must be brought tojustice. Lest we forget, not one person has yet been held to account fortheir involvement in this act. Not only were 3,000 people vaporised thatday - thousands of others were subjected to intense radioactive falloutand the entire population of New York is being callously used asunwitting guinea pigs in a massive radiation exposure “experiment”.

The existence of these crimes against humanity and the planet must beexposed and the real perpetrators apprehended.

New York, 9/11/01 was just one in a sequence of these deliberateradiation exposure crimes. Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq have all beenheavily contaminated with Depleted Uranium weaponry. The verygenetic future of the peoples of these regions is under attack and insome cases destroyed.

Where will be the next target of this Nuclear Madness if they are notstopped?

Ground Zero 1

1 Introduction

This report presents incontrovertible evidence that the Twin Towersof the World Trade Centre were destroyed by Nuclear Explosions.

The main explosive source was a nuclear device located in thebasement of each tower, tightly coupled to its foundation structure.

The incontrovertible proof that the towers were subjected to a nuclearexplosion is the presence of very high concentrations of the elementsStrontium and Barium in dust samples from the WTC collapse. Manyother characteristic products of nuclear fission are also present tocorroborate this. These samples were collected and analysed by the USGeological Survey.

Strontium and Barium found together in closely related concentrations isthe signature of Nuclear Fission.

No other explanation can account for the presence of the largequantities of Barium and Strontium discovered, in high concentrationsthat vary in lockstep with each other at the different locations where dustwas collected across lower Manhattan.

The nuclear device under each tower was not an atomic bomb. Theevidence indicates that it was a clandestine nuclear reactor that wascaused to run out of control and enter an uncontrolled chain reaction,followed by a core meltdown, similar to the Chernobyl disaster in1986.

This report presents the detailed evidence which proves beyond ashadow of a doubt that each Twin Tower of the WTC was destroyedby a nuclear explosion.

2 Ground Zero

Introduction

Ground Zero 3

2 Sources of Information

The report draws largely on the following sources of data andinformation:

1.

The chemical analysis of dust fallout samples from the WTC rubble which covered Lower Manhattan after the collapse. This analysis was performed by the US Geological Survey.

2.

The seismographic data recorded by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at the time the towers collapsed and its comparison to known underground nuclear blast seismograms from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

3.

The Satellite Thermal Imaging of the WTC site carried out by the USGS and eyewitness accounts of elevated debris temperatures and pools of molten steel under the WTC.

4.

The investigation and analysis of continual fallout from the WTC site in the weeks following the collapse. This was carried out by the DELTA Group led by Dr. Thomas Cahill, expert in atmospheric sciences at the University of California Davis.

5.

Comparison of known Underground Nuclear Blasts with photographs of the WTC collapse.

6.

An eyewitness account of the core meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor and comparison to events at the WTC.

Other documentary sources of information were also used asappropriate. These are referenced when quoted.

Data on the radioactive isotopes of the elements was sourced from “TheElements”, John Emsley, OUP, Third Edition 1999.

This report aims to present the scientific evidence that the WTC wasdestroyed by a nuclear explosion in as non-technical a way as possiblefor a non-specialist audience. Where possible, I have explained thebackground physics and chemistry involved. Where mathematics hasbeen used, the average reader should be able to follow it withoutdifficulty.

4 Ground Zero

Sources of Information

Ground Zero 5

3 Evidence of Radioactive Fallout

3.1 Introduction

The most important evidence that the WTC was subjected to nuclearexplosions is the presence of distinctive radioactive fallout in the dustthat enveloped New York. Before we examine that dust and theevidence that it was indeed contaminated with nuclear fallout, it will beuseful to first look at what takes place in a nuclear reactor or atomicbomb. This chapter explains how radioactive fallout is produced,

whatdistinctive substances are produced as a characteristic signature ofnuclear fission

and then goes on to compare that to what was actuallyfound in the dust.

3.2 The Chemistry of Nuclear Fission

Nuclear fission is quite a complex subject and scientists have developedsophisticated computer models to try and predict what will actuallyhappen when a bomb is detonated or a reactor "goes live". But theessential idea relevant to what we are going to present is that achemical element, i.e. Uranium, turns into other elements in a verydistinctive way, releasing energy as it does so. This leaves behind a

distinctive forensic trail

which provides irrefutable evidence of the typeof chemical reaction that produced it - Nuclear Fission.

Isotopes

The nucleus of an atom contains two types of particle: neutrons andprotons. The number of protons determines the chemical element - i.e.whether it is an atom of carbon, iron, uranium or something else. Thenumber of protons is called the

Atomic Number

and has the symbol

Z

.The sum of the number of protons and neutrons is called the

AtomicWeight

of the element. If the number of protons changes, the elementchanges into a different element. However, if the number of neutronschanges while the number of protons stays the same, the elementremains chemically unchanged - it is still the same element, althoughthe weight of its nucleus has changed, as well as its radioactiveproperties.

6 Ground Zero

Evidence of Radioactive Fallout

Atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons arecalled

isotopes

of that element.

Different isotopes of Uranium for example therefore have the samenumber of protons as each other but different numbers of neutrons.Different isotopes have different stability and radioactive half lives. Thetwo main isotopes of Uranium are Uranium 235 and Uranium 238. Thenumbers 235 and 238 tell us the

atomic weight

of each isotope: sincethe number of protons has to be the same in each, we can see thatU238 has three more neutrons in its nucleus than U235.In the nuclear fission reaction used to generate electrical power or toexplode an atomic bomb, atoms of the Uranium 235 isotope arebombarded with neutrons. These neutrons "split the atoms" of Uranium235 into two smaller pieces - i.e. into two smaller atoms which bydefinition will be atoms of elements different to Uranium. In the process,a large amount of energy is released which can either be used fordestructive purposes in a bomb or constructive purposes in a nuclearreactor.

Figure 1 shows one of the most common reactions that occurs whenUranium 235 is fissioned. The Uranium atom, with 92 protons, splits intotwo atoms, one of Strontium 90 with 38 protons and one of Xenon 143with 54 protons.

FIGURE 1 NUCLEAR FISSION OF URANIUM

In Figure 1, there are therefore two numbers next to each element. Thebottom number is the number of protons which defines that element forwhat it is. Uranium will always have 92 protons, Strontium will alwayshave 38 protons and so on.

The upper number is the atomic weight of the atom and is the sum of thenumber of protons and neutrons in the nucleus. Therefore this is thenumber that will change when neutrons are added or removed to createdifferent isotopes. U235 and U238 are different isotopes of Uranium withdifferent radioactive properties. U238 has 3 more neutrons than U235.

U23592

neutron

γ radiation

Xe14354

Sr9038

neutrons

neutronproton

Ground Zero 7

The Chemistry of Nuclear Fission

Protons are

positively

charged, neutrons are

neutral

and electrons are

negatively

charged.

We will see how this accounts for what was found in the WTC dust later.

Fission and Decay Pathways

Unlike a standard chemical reaction in a test tube, a whole range ofelements is produced when an atom of Uranium undergoes fission.However, nuclear fission tends to favour certain “pathways” over othersand much more of some distinctive elements is created than others.Two of the most common and distinctive elements produced are Bariumand Strontium.

These two elements are the signature of Nuclear Fission.

Therefore the two most important “pathways” for Uranium fission leadto Barium and Strontium. Nuclear fission was in fact first discovered byOtto Hahn in the 1930s because he found Barium in a Uranium sampleafter he had bombarded it with neutrons. The uptake of Strontium intochildren’s milk teeth has been used to monitor the fallout fromatmospheric atomic bomb tests since the 1960s. Strontium displacesCalcium in teeth and bones.

The diagram below shows these two major pathways in more detail.

FIGURE 2 FISSION AND DECAY PATHWAYS

When a Uranium atom is hit with a neutron, it

fissions

or splits into two"Fission Fragments" - unstable isotopes of Xenon and Bromine. Thesein turn

decay

relatively quickly to Barium and Strontium. Barium andStrontium in turn have longer half lives and decay relatively slowly, sothey will persist in fallout for some time. Over a longer period, theBarium and Strontium will then decay until a stable isotope ofNeodymium and Zirconium is reached, when radioactive decay stops.

235U

n

Fission Fragment with 143 nucleons

Fission Fragment with 93 nucleons

Xe Cs Ba La

Sr Y Zr

Ce Pr Nd

Br Kr Rbn Neutron

Beta particleβ

β β β β β

β β β β β β

8 Ground Zero


One of the main energy releasing reactions in a nuclear reactor or bombis often shown as follows:

(EQ 1)

In this nuclear fission reaction, a Uranium atom is split into Barium andKrypton gas. (We can see this in Figure 2 above. Barium is the thirddecay element in the top row, Krypton is the second decay element inthe bottom row). 200MeV (mega electron volts) of energy are alsoreleased. This energy is used in the reactor to heat water to producesteam to then drive a turbine and generate electricity.

Another main fission reaction is often shown as:

(EQ 2)

The Barium and Strontium and other elements produced arethemselves radioactive and therefore decay with time into yet otherelements, which leaves more “forensic evidence” that nuclear fissionhas occurred. This is shown above in Figure 2.

Many other pathways occur as well but those shown in Figure 2 are twoof the most important.

Some of the other common fission reactions of Uranium are shownbelow:

(EQ 3)

When the USGS collected and then analysed the dust samples, theywould still be radioactive - and indeed, still are today. Over time, thequantity of each element present will change as it decays into its“daughter product” further down the pathway, until a stable element isreached. We will see the signature of this in some of the dust samples.

In the pathway diagram above, we see that the Uranium atom splits intotwo pieces. These decay via Barium on the one hand and Strontium onthe other. We will see when we look at the USGS data that the daughterproducts of Barium (Lanthanum and Cerium) and of Strontium(Yttrium) are also present in the dust in statistically significantquantities.

92235U +0

1n→144Ba +90Kr +201n + 200MeV

92235U +0

1n→143Xe +90Sr +301n

92235U +0

1n→135I +97Y +401n

92235U +0

1n→139Ba +94Kr +301n

92235U +0

1n→131Sn +103Mo +201n

92235U +0

1n→139Xe +95Sr +201n

Ground Zero 9


Decay Mechanisms

These Decay Pathways are complicated by the fact that differentradioactive isotopes of each element are formed when the originalUranium atom fissions and these isotopes in turn decay in differentways.

The most important decay mechanisms are:

1.

Electron emission or beta particle emission. Beta particles are negatively charged, very low weight particles. They are denoted as

β

-

in nuclear chemistry. Electron emission increases the atomic number (Z) by one.

2.

Positron emission - these are positively charged electrons or beta particles. They are shown as

β

+

and positron emission decreases the atomic number by one.

3.

Electron capture (EC) - the nucleus absorbs an electron or beta particle, also decreasing the atomic number by one.

4.

Alpha particle emission. An alpha particle (

α

) is a Helium nucleus containing 2 protons and 2 neutrons. When an alpha particle is emitted the atomic number of the nucleus therefore falls by two and the atomic weight falls by four.

What does all this mean?

Look at the Periodic Table in Figure 3 and find Xenon with AtomicNumber 54 on the right hand side.

We have already seen (Figure 2) how Xenon decays into Caesium,Barium, Lanthanum etc. by beta particle emission. Each time thishappens, the Atomic Number of the atom increases by one and theelement changes into the next higher element in the Periodic Table.

How does this happen?

Remember, the nucleus consists of positively charged protons andneutral neutrons. The neutron can be thought of a being a combinationof a positive proton and a negative electron. When a negative electron isemitted, a neutron loses a negative change and becomes a positiveproton - so the Atomic Number Z increases by one and the elementchanges. The weight hardly changes at all though, since electrons havenegligible mass compared to protons and neutrons.

However, some isotopes of Xenon do not decay by beta emission: theychange by emitting positrons or even by Electron Capture - they absorbbeta particles. When this happens, a proton in the nucleus becomesneutralised by absorbing an electron and turns into a neutron; theAtomic Number therefore falls by one instead of increasing. Someisotopes of the daughter products of Xenon produced by thismechanism also absorb electrons and so continue decaying ortransmuting in the same way.

10 Ground Zero


FIGURE 3 PERIODIC TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS

3 Li4 Be

11

Na

12

Mg

19

K20

C

a37

R

b38

Sr

55

Cs

56

Ba

87

Fr88

R

a

21

Sc22

Ti

23

V24

C

r25

M

n29

C

u30

Zn

27

Co

26

Fe28

N

i39

Y

40

Zr41

N

b42

M

o43

Tc

47

Ag

48

Cd

45

Rh

44

Ru

46

Pd71

Lu

72

Hf

73

Ta74

W

75

Re

79

Au

80

Hg

77

Ir76

O

s78

Pt

5 B6 C

7 N8 O

9 F10

N

e13

A

l14

Si

15

P16

S

17

Cl

18

Ar

31

Ga

32

Ge

33

As

34

Se35

B

r36

K

r49

In

50

Sn51

Sb

52

Te53

I54

Xe

81

Tl82

Pb

83

Bi

84

Po85

A

t86

R

n

89

Ac

90

Th91

Pa

92

U93

N

p94

Pu

57

La58

C

e59

Pr

60

Nd

61

Pm65

Tb

66

Dy

63

Eu62

Sm

64

Gd

67

Ho

68

Er69

Ym

70

Yb

1 H2 He

Perio

dic

Tabl

e of

the

Elem

ents

Ground Zero 11


Therefore we will see something like this:

(EQ 4)

This produces elements such as Iodine, Tellurium and Antimony.

So Xenon (and Bromine and Krypton in the Strontium pathway) willdecay in two directions - or more precisely, the different isotopes ofXenon, Krypton etc. decay in two directions: one towards elements ofhigher atomic number and one towards elements of lower atomicnumber.

We will see in the data how there sometimes appear to be

two

relationships between elements in the dust - as one element increasesin concentration another appears to both increase and decrease. Thiscan be explained by these two opposing radioactive decaymechanisms.

Xe + β − → II + β − → TeTe + β − → Sb

12 Ground Zero


Half Life

The other piece of nuclear chemistry we will find useful later on is theconcept of half life.

Different radioactive isotopes take varying amounts of time to decayaway into the next element along the chain. The time it takes for half theatoms in a sample of a particular isotope to decay is called the

half life

ofthat isotope. Sr90 has a half life of about 28 years.

This is illustrated in the graph below: after one half life period, 50% ofthe original amount remains; after two half life periods, 25% remainsand so on.

FIGURE 4 RADIOACTIVE HALF LIFE DECAY

The formula for this radioactive decay is:

(EQ 5)

where t is the elapsed time,

N

0

is the original number of atoms presentat time t=0,

N

is the number of atoms left at time t and

λ

is a constant.

For the half life,

N/N

0

= 0.5. From this, the Radioactive Decay Constant

λ

can be calculated for each isotope if we know the half life time, t

half

.

We can then use

λ

to calculate how much of an isotope must havedecayed away in any time

t

we choose.

0 1 2 3 4 50%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Perc

enta

ge R

emai

ning

Number of Half Life Periods

Radioactive Half Life DecayRadioactive Half Life Decay

NN0

= e− λt

Ground Zero 13

The USGS Data

3.3 The USGS Data

The incontrovertible evidence that the WTC was brought down bynuclear explosions is contained in an analysis of the dust fallout fromthe buildings carried out by the United States Geological Survey.

In the aftermath of the collapse, a USGS team took representativesamples of the dust from 35 locations in Lower Manhattan near the siteof the WTC. This included samples from two indoor sites (in localbuildings) and two samples from the insulation coatings of girders usedin the construction of the towers.

Their report entitled

“Environmental Studies of the World TradeCentre area after the September 11, 2001 attack”

was published onthe USGS website

1

, with classification Open File Report OFR-01-0429,Version 1.1, Published November 27, 2001.

The introduction to the report describes its context as follows:

“The information in this report describes the results of aninterdisciplinary environmental characterization of the World TradeCenter (WTC) area following requests from other Federal agencies afterthe attack on September 11, 2001. The scientific investigation includedtwo main aspects: 1) imaging spectroscopy mapping of materials tocover a large area around the WTC and 2) laboratory analysis ofsamples collected in the WTC area."

The spectroscopic imaging was carried out by the airborne infra-redsystem AVIRIS, which we will come back to later.

Sample Collection Procedure

The USGS described the sample collection procedure

2

as follows:

"Sample Collection in the World Trade Center Area, Sept. 17-18,2001"

“A 2-person USGS crew collected grab samples from 35 localitieswithin a 0.5 -1 km radius circle centred on the World Trade Centre siteon the evenings of September 17 and 18, 2001 (see samplecollection map, below). “

"Many of the streets bordering the collection locations were cleaned orwere in the process of being cleaned at the time of sample collection.Given this limitation, collection of dust samples was restricted toundisturbed window ledges, car windshields, flower pots, protectedareas in door entry ways, and steps. Occasionally, samples werecollected from the sidewalk adjacent to walls that were afforded some

1. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/index.html2. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/sample.location.html

14 Ground Zero


degree of protection from the elements and cleanup process. In manycases the samples formed compact masses suggestive of havingbeen dampened by rain and having dried in the intervening 3 - 4days. Two samples of an insulation coating (WTC01-8 and WTC01-9) were collected from steel girders recently removed from the debrispile of the WTC. Samples were gathered by nitrile-gloved hand andput into doubled plastic sample bags (sample bag in another samplebag). Initially, Global Position Satellite (GPS) locations were collectedfor the sample collection locations, but this approach was abandonedbecause of difficulty in acquiring a satellite signal between tallbuildings. Instead, sample locations were identified using roadintersections where road signs remained intact. All but two of thesamples were collected outdoors and had been subjected to wind andwater during a rain storm the night of September 14. One sample(WTC01-20) was collected indoors near the gymnasium in the WorldFinancial Centre directly across West Street from the World TradeCentre. Samples of concrete (WTC01-37A and WTC01-37B) werecollected from the WTC debris at the same location as WTC01-9. Asample of dust (WTC01-36) blown by the collapse into an openwindow of an apartment located 30 floors up and 0.4 km from thecentre of the WTC site was also acquired a few days later. "

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/sample.location.html

The USGS map of the sampling locations in Manhattan is reproduced inFigure 36 on page 59.

Chemical Analysis

The report then gives a detailed chemical analysis of the dust samples.

The table of data is reproduced below

1

.

1.

nm means data was not measured from that sampling location.

2.

% means percentage of the sample by weight

3.

ppm means parts per million of the sample by weight.

4.

1 ppm = 0.0001% or 1% = 10,000 ppm

1. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-010429/chem1/ WTCchemistrytable.html

Ground Zero 15

The USGS Data

TABLE 1

OUTDOOR DUST SAMPLES

Outdoor Dust Samples

Location WTC 01-02 WTC 01-03 WTC 01-05 WTC 01-06 WTC 01-14Silicon% 21.2 26.3 11.4 11.4 15.3Calcium% 15.01 9.58 20.94 20.58 7.65Magnes.% 3.11 2.23 2.73 2.73 2.83Sulphur% 1.33 nm 0.87 nm nmIron % 4.13 2.16 1.41 1.42 1.87Aluminium% 4.13 2.75 2.75 2.73 2.86C (organic) % 0.98 3.55 nm nm 3.08C (CO3)% 1.24 1.63 nm nm 1.46Sodium % 0.82 0.76 0.50 0.50 0.59Potassium % 0.63 0.69 0.46 0.47 0.56Titanium % 0.39 0.25 0.24 0.24 0.31Manganese % 0.15 0.08 0.10 0.10 0.12Phosphor. % 0.03 0.05 0.03 0.03 0.02Ignition Loss% 7.96 13.6 19.6 19.6 18.1Barium ppm 765 376 nm nm 461Strontium ppm 1000 409 nm nm 643Zinc ppm 2990 1200 nm nm 1570Lead ppm 710 176 nm nm 276Copper ppm 438 142 nm nm 242Cerium ppm 108 50.9 nm nm 68.8Yttrium ppm 58.9 30.2 nm nm 46.5Cr ppm 224 98 nm nm 116Nickel ppm 88.4 30.8 nm nm 28.6La ppm 51 25.8 nm nm 34.8Antimony ppm 52.1 26.3 nm nm 40.2Vanadium ppm 38.8 42.5 nm nm 30.6Mo ppm 25.4 14.5 nm nm 19.1Lithium ppm 27.4 17.4 nm nm 23.2Thorium ppm 11.2 5.56 nm nm 7.92Rubidium ppm 21.2 23.7 nm nm 25.2Cobalt ppm 13.9 8.4 nm nm 7.1Niobium ppm 11 7.8 nm nm 9.1Scandium ppm 8.8 6.6 nm nm 6.1Uranium ppm 3.92 1.96 nm nm 2.89Cadmium ppm 7.3 3.2 nm nm 3.4Arsenic ppm 6.8 3.7 nm nm 5.1Gallium ppm 6 5.4 nm nm 4.1Beryllium ppm 3.7 2.2 nm nm 2.9

16 Ground Zero


Silver ppm 1.2 3.8 nm nm 1.2Caesium ppm 0.73 0.76 nm nm 0.88Bismuth ppm 0.5 0.68 nm nm 0.56Thallium ppm 0.1 0.13 nm nm 0.11

WTC 01-15 WTC 01-16 WTC01-17 WTC 01-21 WTC 01-22Silicon % 13.6 17.0 16.0 12.8 17.0Calcium % 18.58 13.36 17.01 18.94 16.80Magnesium % 2.64 1.79 2.06 2.68 2.77Sulphur % 5.40 3.68 nm 5.10 3.70Iron % 1.87 1.92 1.71 1.49 2.78Aluminum % 2.59 2.27 2.30 2.73 2.78C (organic) % 2.30 2.51 nm 4.02 2.55C (CO3) % 1.48 1.47 nm 1.44 1.31Sodium % 0.66 0.87 0.93 0.50 0.83Potassium % 0.49 0.69 0.54 0.50 0.52Titanium % 0.25 0.26 0.25 0.24 0.29Mn % 0.10 0.07 0.07 0.12 0.12P % 0.03 0.02 0.02 0.03 0.03Ignition Loss% 17.3 22.8 15.9 21.2 15.3Barium ppm 405 3670 nm 460 452Strontium ppm 736 3130 nm 787 710Zinc ppm 1110 1410 nm 1500 1380Lead ppm 152 208 nm 278 452Copper ppm 367 307 nm 153 130Cerium ppm 64.9 132 nm 77 72Yttrium ppm 46.1 31.4 nm 54.5 47.6Cr ppm 129 95.2 nm 104 111Nickel ppm 32.9 31.4 nm 31.2 30.6La ppm 32.7 69.9 nm 38.6 35.4Antimony ppm 30.2 148 nm 33.1 27.5Vanadium ppm 27.1 24.9 nm 27.9 29.7Mo ppm 12.1 10 nm 9 6.9Lithium ppm 22.1 18 nm 23.3 23Thorium ppm 7.3 5.36 nm 8.48 8.5Rubidium ppm 21.6 21.6 nm 21 21.1Cobalt ppm 6.5 6.5 nm 5.3 6.3Niobium ppm 7.6 6.6 nm 9 9.2Scandium ppm 5.9 4.4 nm 6.2 6.2Uranium ppm 2.71 2.3 nm 3.16 3.09

TABLE 1



Ground Zero 17

The USGS Data

Cadmium ppm 4 3 nm 4.6 3.8Arsenic ppm 4 4.3 nm 3.6 6.6Gallium ppm 3.9 4.3 nm 3.9 4Beryllium ppm 2.4 1.8 nm 2.9 2.9Silver ppm 1.4 1.5 nm 2.4 1.4Caesium ppm 0.78 0.87 nm 0.76 0.76Bismuth ppm 0.25 0.28 nm 0.5 0.43Thallium ppm 0.11 0.12 nm 0.1 0.1

WTC 01-25 WTC 01-27 WTC 01-28 WTC01-30 WTC01-34Silicon % 13.2 15.2 13.8 15.1 12.2Calcium % 20.37 19.51 19.65 19.73 20.51Mg % 3.29 3.04 2.83 3.49 3.01Sulphur % 4.03 4.29 4.56 nm nmIron % 1.33 1.72 1.80 1.85 1.45Aluminum % 3.28 3.05 2.9 3.59 2.98C (organi)c % 2.94 1.95 2.42 nm nmC (CO3)% 1.87 1.82 1.68 nm nmSodium % 0.62 0.62 0.76 0.71 0.50Potassium % 0.56 0.50 0.54 0.56 0.51Titanium % 0.29 0.29 0.26 0.29 0.25Mn % 0.15 0.12 0.12 0.14 0.12P% 0.03 0.03 0.02 0.04 0.03Ignition Loss% 17.5 14.4 16.7 17.5 18.5Barium ppm 624 470 491 nm nmStrontium ppm 695 701 711 nm nmZinc ppm 1910 1650 1720 nm nmLead ppm 756 204 234 nm nmCopper ppm 251 188 218 nm nmCerium ppm 85 77.7 75 nm nmYttrium ppm 61.6 54.9 53.8 nm nmCr ppm 134 12 106 nm nmNickel ppm 39.2 39.4 26.1 nm nmLa ppm 43.5 39.5 38.4 nm nmAntimony ppm 65.8 50.4 51.8 nm nmVanadium ppm 30.5 30 28.9 nm nmMo ppm 30.9 27.1 42 nm nmLithium ppm 28.5 25.2 24.8 nm nmThorium ppm 9.94 9.14 8.48 nm nmRubidium ppm 24 21.7 22.5 nm nm

TABLE 1



18 Ground Zero


Cobalt ppm 7.4 6.2 5.9 nm nmNiobium ppm 11 11 10 nm nmScandium ppm 7.1 6.6 6.2 nm nmUranium ppm 3.78 3.36 3.27 nm nmCadmium ppm 7.5 5 5.2 nm nmArsenic ppm 4.2 5 4.8 nm nmGallium ppm 4.3 4.3 4.1 nm nmBeryllium ppm 3.6 3.2 3.1 nm nmSilver ppm 1.4 1.4 1.7 nm nmCaesium ppm 0.83 0.77 0.76 nm nmBismuth ppm 0.67 0.4 0.48 nm nmThallium ppm 0.1 0.09 0.11 nm nm

TABLE 2

INDOOR DUST SAMPLES & GIRDER COATINGS

Indoor dust samples Girder coatings

WTC 01-20 WTC 01-36 WTC 01-08 WTC 01-09Silicon % 14.2 11.7 15.0 15.5Calcium % 19.44 21.30 20.73 26.01Magnesium % 2.59 2.88 6.94 3.23Sulfur % 5.51 5.77 1.39 1.23Iron % 1.25 1.38 1.25 0.55Aluminum % 2.55 2.86 2.92 3.56C ( organic) % 2.68 2.32 2.48 2.45C (CO3)% 1.27 1.50 1.89 1.86Sodium % 1.16 0.58 0.12 0.16Potassium % 0.46 0.46 0.28 0.32Titanium % 0.25 0.23 0.21 0.28Mn % 0.10 0.11 0.14 0.19P % 0.02 0.02 0.01 0.01Ignition Loss% 15.7 16.9 15.8 13Barium ppm 390 438 317 472Strontium ppm 706 823 444 378Zinc ppm 1330 1400 57.4 101Lead ppm 153 159 9.13 11.7Copper ppm 176 95 10.3 12.8Cerium ppm 61.6 70.2 202 356Yttrium ppm 44.1 52.6 134 243Cr ppm 94 107 153 86.5

TABLE 1



Ground Zero 19

The USGS Data

Nickel ppm 29.8 28.5 202 22.6La ppm 31.3 35.6 102 175Antimony ppm 38.9 33.9 0.56 1.2Vanadium ppm 25 28.6 30.5 40.1Mo ppm 19 16.1 0.85 1.2Lithium ppm 21.9 24.9 25.2 36.4Thorium ppm 7.25 8.64 17.9 30.7Rubidium ppm 18.9 21.1 8 8.2Cobalt ppm 5 5.3 12.3 1.7Niobium ppm 8 9 4.4 6.3Scandium ppm 5.4 6.4 9.2 9.8Uranium ppm 2.7 3.23 4.7 7.57Cadmium ppm 4.2 5.8 0.11 0.21Arsenic ppm 3.5 3.8 < 2 < 2Gallium ppm 3.6 4 2.8 4.2Beryllium ppm 2.5 3.1 4 4.2Silver ppm 3.5 1.6 1.8 0.96Cesium ppm 0.72 0.78 0.18 0.22Bismuth ppm 0.64 0.82 0.008 0.01Thallium ppm 0.09 0.09 0.02 0.02

TABLE 3

SUMMARY TABLE

Summary

Minimum Maximum Mean*Silicon % 11.4 26.3 14.8Calcium % 7.65 26.01 18.36Magnesium % 1.79 6.94 2.88Sulfur % 0.87 5.77 3.11Iron % 0.55 4.13 1.63Aluminum % 2.27 4.13 2.90C (organic) % 0.98 4.02 2.48C (CO3)% 1.24 1.89 1.55Sodium % 0.12 1.16 0.57Potassium % 0.28 0.69 0.50Titanium % 0.21 0.39 0.26Manganese % 0.07 0.19 0.11P % 0.01 .05 0.02Ignition Loss% 7.96 22.8 16.35

TABLE 2

INDOOR DUST SAMPLES & GIRDER COATINGS

Indoor dust samples Girder coatings

20 Ground Zero


Barium ppm 317 3670 533.38Strontium ppm 378 3130 726.61Zinc ppm 57.4 2990 1004.70Lead ppm 9.13 756 166.75Copper ppm 10.3 438 136.31Cerium ppm 50.9 356 91.23Yttrium ppm 30.2 243 57.45Cr ppm 86.5 224 116.61Nickel ppm 22.6 202 37.77La ppm 25.8 175 45.96Antimony ppm 0.56 148 24.84Vanadium ppm 24.9 42.5 30.67Molyb ppm 0.85 42 11.34Lithium ppm 17.4 36.4 24.00Thorium ppm 5.36 30.7 9.31Rubidium ppm 8 25.2 19.01Cobalt ppm 1.7 13.9 6.36Niobium ppm 4.4 11 8.34Scandium ppm 4.4 9.8 6.63Uranium ppm 1.96 7.57 3.29Cadmium ppm 0.11 7.5 2.80Arsenic ppm 3.5 6.8 ***Gallium ppm 2.8 6 4.15Beryllium ppm 1.8 4.2 2.96Silver ppm 0.96 3.8 1.66Caesium ppm 0.18 0.88 0.64Bismuth ppm 0.008 0.82 0.28Thallium ppm 0.02 0.13 0.08

TABLE 3

SUMMARY TABLE

Summary

Ground Zero 21

The USGS Data

Notes on these Tables

The data was divided by the USGS into two categories:

1.

Major Elements

2.

Trace Elements

The USGS classified as "Major Elements" those elements found in highenough quantities to be measured in percentage terms by weight. Thisincluded the common everyday elements that one would expect to findin building rubble as well as some other less common elements.

The USGS classified as "Trace Elements" any less common elementsthat were either only found in relatively small quantities or should onlyhave been found in small quantities, if at all. They are shown in ppm byweight. 1ppm = 1mg/kg.

Summary Table

The Summary Table (Table 3) shows the Maximum, Minimum and Meanvalues taking into account all of the sample locations, including theindoor samples and the two girder coatings. The two girder coatings hadvery different characteristics to both the indoor and outdoor dustsamples.

Location Identifiers

The location identifiers WTC 01-02 etc. refer to the locations in LowerManhattan around the WTC where the USGS team took a sample.These are shown on the USGS diagram “Chemistry Figure 4” (ourFigure 36 on page 59) which is supposed to show the variation inconcentration of the predominant trace elements in the dust at differentlocations in Lower Manhattan around the WTC.

22 Ground Zero


3.4 The Major Elements

The most abundant elements discovered were Silicon and Calcium,which is what one would expect from building rubble and dust. Concreteis made from 44% Calcium Oxide, 15% Silicon Dioxide (better known assand) and smaller percentages of Aluminium Oxide, Ferric Oxide,Magnesium Oxide and Gypsum (Calcium Sulphate). Plaster is alsomade from Gypsum.

The major elements discovered at over 1% concentration tend tocorrelate with this.

The levels of some of the other elements shown in the table inpercentage weight terms are, however, unusual. Sodium and Potassiumare not particularly "rare" elements but the levels measured correlatestrongly with some of the anomalous trace elements discovered. We willlook at these in the trace element section in comparison to Zinc.Titanium and Manganese are really trace elements even though theyhave been included by the USGS in the table with percentagemeasurements, not ppm. The Titanium constituted 0.26% of the dust or2600ppm on average and is present across nearly all locations at aboutthe same concentration of 0.25 - 0.3%, but had an even higher peakvalue of 3900ppm at location WTC 01-02. This is very high and we willalso discuss the possible significance of this in the next section on thetrace elements.

Titanium Oxide is sometimes added as a pigment to cement andconcrete if a light coloured or even white concrete is desired. Forextremely white concrete, up to 5% TiO can be added. The facade of theWTC was 30% glass and 70% aluminium cladding so this would nothave required white concrete for aesthetic purposes. TiO is alsoexpensive so it will only be used where necessary.

The levels of Manganese in the dust are also very high, averaging0.11% or 1100ppm. We are not aware of any common building materialthat could account for this - but interesting correlations with the othertrace elements were found when the data was analysed.

Therefore we have included analysis of the Sodium, Potassium,Titanium and Manganese levels in the next section on the traceelements, since the high levels discovered in the dust were anomalous.There are some telling patterns in the Sodium and Potassium data andTitanium and Manganese should have only been found in tracequantities, not an average of 2600ppm (0.26%) and 1100ppm (0.11%)respectively.

Ground Zero 23

The Trace Elements

3.5 The Trace Elements

Now we will examine the elements classified as trace elements by theUSGS, listed in ppm or parts per million.

A concentration of 1% is 1 part per 100 or 10,000 parts per million(ppm). Therefore 1 part per million is 1 ten thousandth of a percent.

Let us examine the Top 10 trace elements, as they were classified bythe USGS, with the missing values (not measured) removed:

Overall Impression

It does not take much detective work to see that something very strangehas taken place.

The figures for Barium, Strontium and Zinc leap off the page.

The highest concentrations of trace elements discovered across thesampling locations were by far for Zinc, Strontium and Barium followedby Lead, Copper and Chromium.

Immediately, we see very high concentrations of Zinc and Strontium atlocation WTC 01-02 and even higher concentrations of Barium andStrontium at WTC 01-16 exceeding 3000ppm. The Zinc concentrationexceeds 1000ppm for all the dust samples.

TABLE 4

TOP 10 TRACE ELEMENTS

Dust Samples (ppm)

Outdoor Dust

Ba Sr Zn Pb Cu Ce Y Cr Ni La

WTC 01-02 765 1000 2990 710 438 108 58.9 224 88.4 51WTC 01-03 376 409 1200 176 142 50.9 30.2 98 30.8 25.8WTC 01-14 461 643 1570 276 242 68.8 46.5 116 28.6 34.8WTC 01-15 405 736 1110 152 367 64.9 46.1 129 32.9 32.7WTC 01-16 3670 3130 1410 208 307 132 31.4 95.2 31.4 69.9WTC 01-21 460 787 1500 278 153 77 54.5 104 31.2 38.6WTC 01-22 452 710 1380 452 130 72 47.6 111 30.6 35.4WTC 01-25 624 695 1910 756 251 85 61.6 134 39.2 43.5WTC 01-27 470 701 1650 204 188 77.7 54.9 126 39.4 39.5WTC 01-28 491 711 1720 234 218 75 53.8 106 26.1 38.4

Indoor Dust


WTC 01-20 390 706 1330 153 176 61.6 44.1 94 29.8 31.3WTC 01-36 438 823 1400 159 95 70.2 52.6 107 28.5 35.6

Girder Coating


WTC 01-08 317 444 57.4 9.13 10.3 202 134 153 202 102WTC 01-09 472 378 101 11.7 12.8 356 243 86.5 22.6 175

24 Ground Zero


These concentrations far exceed what is normally considered to be a"trace" amount. For instance, there is between 1g/kg and 3g/kg of Zincpresent in the dust. There is frequently more than 0.7g/kg of Strontiumin the dust, with over 3g/kg at one location. These quantities areunprecedented.

A "trace" amount would normally be considered to be less than 10ppmbut that does not necessarily mean that even 10ppm of somesubstances would be acceptable or normal.

We now examine this in more detail.

Barium and Strontium

Looking at the first two columns of data, we see that the concentration ofBarium and Strontium hardly falls below 400ppm for Barium or below700ppm for Strontium, and reaches well over 3000ppm for both of themat WTC 01-16.Barium and Strontium are rare trace elements with limited industrialuses. Strontium salts are mainly used to produce the red colour infireworks. Barium is used in some paints, for the manufacture of someglass and as a "getter" in vacuum tubes. Both elements are highly toxic.

These elements simply should not be present in building rubble orbuilding materials in even a valid trace amount, which would be lessthan 10ppm or 10mg/kg.

Below we have graphed the concentration of Barium and Strontium inthe dust at the Outdoor and Indoor Sampling locations.

Ground Zero 25

The Trace Elements

FIGURE 5

The enormous peak in Strontium and Barium concentration at WTC 01-16 is readily apparent. The concentration of the two elements reaches3670ppm and 3130ppm respectively or over 0.3% by weight of the dust.This means that 0.37% of the sample was Barium and 0.31% of thesample was Strontium by weight at that location.

This is higher than even the Titanium concentration at WTC 01-16 of0.25%.

This is quite simply astronomical. Barium and Strontium compounds arenot valid constituents of concrete or any other building material such asglass, aluminium, plaster and steel. They should not be there. Even atthe other sampling locations the Barium and Strontium concentrationdoes not fall below 400ppm, which is still an astronomically high level todetect for these elements.

The mean concentration of Barium including the low girder coatingreadings is 533ppm and for Strontium, 727ppm.

These are not trace amounts. They are highly dangerous and toxicamounts.

WTC

01-

02

WTC

01-

03

WTC

01-

14

WTC

01-

15

WTC

01-

16

WTC

01-

21

WTC

01-

22

WTC

01-

25

WTC

01-

27

WTC

01-

28

WTC

01-

20

WTC

01-

36

75

575

1075

1575

2075

2575

3075

3575

4075

part

s pe

r mill

ion

Barium ppm

Strontiumppm

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ba and SrConcentration of Ba and Sr

Source: USGS (Not including Girder Coatings)

26 Ground Zero


Correlation Between Ba and Sr

In Figure 6 below, the concentration of Barium at each location is plottedagainst the Strontium concentration.

FIGURE 6

The correlation between the concentrations of the two elements Bariumand Strontium is very strong. The graph on the left shows just the first 9locations, where the concentration of both Barium and Strontium wasbelow 1000ppm. The graph on the right adds the 10th data point atWTC 01-16, where the concentration of Barium and Strontium both shotup to over 3000 ppm.

By inspection we can see that the data lies on an asymptotic curve.Looking at the left hand graph in particular, most of the points form avery tight cluster (circled in red), where the Barium concentration wasbetween 400-500ppm and the Strontium concentration was between700 - 800ppm. This is extremely telling that such a high number ofsamples had very similar concentrations. It shows a fairly homogeneousdispersal of the radionucleides by the blast (with the exception of onedata point at WTC 01-16) and that the Barium and Strontiumconcentrations are related in a fairly distinct and narrow band - theywere produced by a common process. The high concentration at WTC01-16 still fits the correlation relationship - evidently the process whichhad produced the Strontium and Barium was still ongoing and active atthat location, leading to an extremely high concentration there.

Correlation Coefficient

The quality of this correlation can be quantified statistically using what isknown as the Product Moment Correlation Coefficient. CorrelationCoefficients are used to estimate how strong is the relationship betweentwo different things - e.g. between smoking and lung disease. If there isa high correlation coefficient - the two things might be linked.

Using this method, the Coefficient of Correlation between theconcentration of Barium and Strontium at the outdoor and indoor

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000

Stro

ntiu

m (p

pm)

Barium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ba vs SrConcentration of Ba vs Sr

Not including Girder Coatings

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800

Stro

ntiu

m (p

pm)

Barium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ba vs SrConcentration of Ba vs Sr


Ground Zero 27

The Trace Elements

sampling locations is 0.99 to 2 decimal places (0.9897 to 4 decimalplaces).

•

The Correlation Coefficient between the Concentration of Barium andStrontium is 0.9897

The maximum Correlation Coefficient that it is mathematically possibleto obtain is 1. This would mean that there is a perfect "match" betweenthe two factors we are looking at and the data points for the twoelements would lie on a completely straight line with no variationbetween them.

To obtain a Correlation Coefficient of 0.9897 with this number ofmeasurements, taken at different places around Manhattan, is

very,very significant indeed

.

What this means is, we can say there is a 99% correlation in thevariation in the concentration between the two elements. They vary inlockstep. We can say with absolute mathematical certainty that anychange in the concentration of one of these elements, either the Bariumor the Strontium, is matched by the same change in the concentration ofthe other.

Whatever

process

gave rise to the presence of the Barium or theStrontium, must have produced the other one as well.

There is only one process that can account for this: a very well knownprocess indeed that we discussed at the beginning of this chapter.

Nuclear Fission.

We can use another statistical procedure to test whether thiscorrelation between the two values could have arisen by chance. Forinstance, if there are only two data points, one could not fail to obtainvery good correlation between them (correlation of 1 in fact).

This is because if you only have two data points, you can only draw astraight line to join them together.

Therefore if there are only a small number of data points, maybe half adozen or so and a high correlation is observed, it may be due to chancerather than any real underlying connection, if we do not know or cannotprovide a logical explanation for what is causing the link.

The USGS took 12 measurements for Barium and Strontium (notincluding the two Girder Coatings which we have excluded for themoment since they are of a different qualitative type).

Using what is called a

t

test statistic, another statistical technique, weobtain a

t

value of 21.83 for the correlation coefficient of 0.99 with 12data points. Without explaining this in detail, what this tells us is that thechance that such a high correlation coefficient could have arisen bychance with 12 measurements is vanishingly small.

28 Ground Zero


In addition we are not working in the dark, without scientific knowledgeof any process that could both: a) cause Barium and Strontium to bepresent in the first place and b) cause such a strong relationshipbetween the concentration of Barium and Strontium in the differentsamples.

We do know what process would cause this. We know that if thatprocess had occurred, Barium and Strontium would be present. And weknow that if that process had occurred, a strong statistical correlationbetween the quantities of Barium and Strontium would be found.

That process is Nuclear Fission.

Girder Coatings

About 400ppm of Barium and Strontium was measured in two samplesof insulation girder coatings (WTC 01-08 and 01-09). The concentrationof Strontium

1

, [Sr], actually falls somewhat below that of Barium in thesecond girder WTC 01-09, as at WTC 01-16, whereas in every othersample the level of Strontium discovered was higher than Barium. Giventhe elevated levels of Barium daughter products found in the secondgirder and even the highest level of Uranium discovered, this probablyshows that active fission was still ongoing in the second girder coating,in the same way as at WTC 01-16 and therefore more Barium wasfound than Strontium; in other samples where the rate of fission hadslowed down to give way to decay, the concentrations of Barium andStrontium reverse, due to the different half lives. Barium isotopes have ashorter half life than Strontium isotopes so they decay more quickly andafter a period of time when no new Barium or Strontium has beendeposited, [Sr] will exceed [Ba]. The fact that more Barium thanStrontium was still found at WTC 01-16 and WTC 01-09, shows that theoverall nuclear processes taking place were somewhat favouringBarium over Strontium - and hence Zinc as well, as we will explore later.

Summary

The tight cluster of Barium (400 - 500ppm) and Strontium (700 -800ppm) concentrations across widely separated sampling locations inManhattan is cast iron proof that Nuclear Fission has occurred. Weknow that Barium and Strontium are the characteristic signature offission: they are formed by two of the most common Uranium fissionpathways. The fact that their concentrations are so tightly coupledmeans that their source was at the very epicentre of the event whichcreated the dust cloud that enveloped Manhattan. It was not a localisedpre-existing chemical source which would have only contaminated a fewclosely spaced samples and left the rest untouched.The very high concentrations of Barium and Strontium at location WTC01-16 show that active nuclear fission was still ongoing at that spot: thedust was still "hot" and new Barium and Strontium was being activelygenerated by transmutation from their parent nuclei.

1. [Sr] denotes the

concentration

of Strontium

Ground Zero 29

The Trace Elements

Zinc

We will now examine the quantities of Zinc that were detected in theWTC dust samples.

Looking at the column of data for Zinc in Table 4, the concentration of2990ppm at WTC 01-02 immediately stands out. In fact, for the outdoorsamples, Zinc is the most common trace element at

all

samplinglocations, with generally between 1000ppm and 2000ppm except forthis spike of nearly 3000ppm at WTC 01-02.

This translates to what is an enormous concentration of 0.1% to 0.2% ofZinc in the dust overall and at WTC 01-02, 0.299% of the dust was Zinc.This exceeds the concentration of the supposed "non-trace" elementManganese and Phosphorous and almost equals the elevated Titaniumconcentration of 0.39% at that location.

Where did all this Zinc come from?

Comparison of Zinc to Barium and Strontium

In the following graph, we additionally plot the Zinc concentration ateach location in comparison with the Barium and Strontium.

FIGURE 7

One can see that the peak in Zinc concentration at WTC 01-02 is alsoaccompanied by a higher Ba and Sr concentration for those elementsthan at any of the other locations except WTC 01-16, but theconcentrations of Zn, Sr and Ba all vary together in a similar way at alllocations, except at WTC 01-16 and in the girder coatings, which are thelast two data points WTC 01-08 and WTC 01-09.

WTC

01-

02

WTC

01-

03

WTC

01-

14

WTC

01-

15

WTC

01-

16

WTC

01-

21

WTC

01-

22

WTC

01-

25

WTC

01-

27

WTC

01-

28

WTC

01-

20

WTC

01-

36

WTC

01-

08

WTC

01-

09

75

575

1075

1575

2075

2575

3075

3575

4075

part

s pe

r mill

ion

Barium ppm

Strontium ppm

Zinc ppm

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ba, Sr, ZnConcentration of Ba, Sr, Zn

Source: USGS (Including Girder Coatings)

30 Ground Zero


If we include the data for WTC 01-16, the Correlation Coefficientbetween the Zinc and Barium concentration is 0.007 to 3 decimalplaces, from which we would conclude there is absolutely no correlationat all.

If we exclude that one sampling location, where the Ba and Srconcentrations peaked, the correlation coefficient between the Zinc andBarium is 0.96 to 2 decimal places and between the Zinc and Strontium,0.66 to 2 decimal places.

This can be seen on the following graphs, where we plot theconcentration of Barium and Strontium at each location against the Zincconcentration.

FIGURE 8

This shows that the Zinc and Barium concentrations are closely relatedand if we exclude what must have been an extraordinary event at WTC01-16 as an outlier, the correlation is very good. The Product MomentCorrelation Coefficient is 0.96. (We will discuss later why WTC 01-16might be so qualitatively different to the other locations).

By inspection we can see that the equation of the line of best fit isapproximately:

[Zn] = 3 • [Ba].

i.e. the concentration of Zinc is 3 times the concentration of Barium.Calculated by the method of least squares, the equation for the best fitregression line is: [Zn] = 4.4[Ba] - 538.

The correlation between the Zinc and Strontium is not so clear, showingthat the relationship must be more indirect. We would expect this, sinceStrontium and Barium are produced by different nuclear fissionpathways.

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000

Zinc

(ppm

)

Barium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ba vs ZnConcentration of Ba vs Zn

Including Girder Coatings

Girder Coatings

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500

Zinc

(ppm

)

Strontium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Sr vs ZnConcentration of Sr vs Zn

Not Including Girder Coatings

Ground Zero 31

The Trace Elements

In addition, in spent nuclear fuel rods, Strontium is found as Strontiumoxide (SrO) - the Strontium produced by the nuclear fission explosionunder the Twin Towers will certainly have been oxidised to SrO by theheat. (The Barium and Zinc will also have been present as BaO andZnO). SrO is extremely soluble in water, so some of the Strontiumconcentration results obtained may have been distorted by the rainwhich fell on New York a few days after the towers were destroyed.

Figure 8 shows that there is a very strong linear relationship betweenthe levels of Zinc and Barium found at the WTC site. This may indicatethat a closely related nuclear sub-process gave rise to them, whichproduced 3 times as much Zinc as Barium by weight.

If so, that would be a very unusual nuclear event.

There is a lesser known nuclear process that could perhaps account forthis, which would be indicative of very high energies indeed. Thisprocess is known as Ternary Fission.

Ternary Fission

In Ternary Fission, an atom of uranium splits not into two atoms but intothree atoms. One of the well known by-products of atomic bombs isCarbon 14 and it is known that Carbon 14 is also a ternary fissionproduct of nuclear reactors. The power loading in a reactor has to behigh to produce ternary fission, in other words we need a lot of energy tosplit uranium into three pieces instead of two. Nuclear explosions wouldcertainly produce ternary fission - maybe even quaternary fission andeven further levels of "atom smashing".

What would be the other two nuclei or fission fragments produced if oneof the three is Carbon 14?

The following process would account for this:

(EQ 6)

In the first step, Uranium fissions into Radon, the heaviest of the inert ornoble gases plus Carbon 14 plus a large burst of excess neutrons. Wehave seen that Uranium "likes" to use the noble gas pathways, so theproduction of Radon and therefore the complementary fission fragmentCarbon 14 must occur, accounting for the Carbon 14 produced bynuclear bombs.

In the second step, the Radon further fissions into Barium and Zinc witha further large release of neutrons.

This process would certainly partially account for the high levels of Zincdetected, in close correlation to Barium. Other interrelated processesmust also have been at work to produce almost exactly three times the

92235U +x0

1n→ 86222Rn + 6

14C +y01n

86222Rn→30

65Zn + 56140Ba +z0

1n

32 Ground Zero


concentration of Zinc to Barium. This might lead into classified domainsof nuclear weapons engineering and testing but one conclusion can bedrawn: the high levels of Zinc indicate that the WTC nuclear explosionsmight have had characteristics

akin to a neutron bomb

.

Girder Coatings

It is also very interesting that the concentration of Zinc in the indoor andoutdoor dust samples is over 1000 ppm but an order of magnitude lowerthan that in the girder coating samples, where only 50 - 100ppm of Zincwas found. Whatever caused the elevated levels of Zinc in the dust, didnot penetrate into the girder insulation coatings.

The Barium and particularly Strontium levels in the girder coatings arealso lower than in the dust but still fairly high, comparable to their levelsin the dust. So this discrepancy between Barium and Zinc in the girdercoatings, along with WTC01-16, suggests that there was not just onedirect process at work for the generation of Zn and Ba but a number ofparallel processes - as one would expect from the different fissionpathways that occur.

Very interestingly, the levels of further fission daughter nuclei of Bariumand Strontium such as Cerium, Yttrium and Lanthanum are all an orderof magnitude higher in the girder coatings than in the dust.

So we have an inverse relationship between the levels of Zinc, Bariumand Strontium and the levels of further decay nuclei in the girdercoatings.

This may indicate that fission products (Ba, Sr) were initially forced intothe girder coatings by the proximate force of the blast. These fissionproducts had partially decayed into Ce, La and Y by the time thesamples were collected but no new Ba or Sr had been deposited in themeantime. The girder coatings therefore trapped high levels of Ce, Laand Y but some of the oxides of these elements in the dust exposed tothe weather was leached out by the rain. However, in the dust itself,spread out across Manhattan, more Ba/Sr/Zn was still being depositedfrom the decay of the heavy radioactive inert gases present and fromnew fission products being continually generated under the site.

Sodium and Potassium

Now we will look at Sodium and Potassium. These are not rareelements as such and the USGS classified them as "Major Elements"due to the high levels found. However, the variations in concentration ofthese two elements at the different sampling locations is very revealingand we have compared them to Zinc in the following analysis.In the following graph, we show the concentration of Potassium, Sodiumand Zinc at each sampling location.

This shows that (apart from the very high peak in Sodium levels for oneof the indoor dust samples) the Sodium and Potassium concentrationsboth display this now characteristic peak at location WTC 01-16.

Ground Zero 33

The Trace Elements

Sodium has the same peak as Zinc at WTC 01-02 and like Zinc, falls toa minimum in the girder coatings - far below the concentrations found inthe dust.

Potassium is very similar except its concentration was not a peak atWTC 01-02 but somewhat lower than the next location, WTC 01-03.

FIGURE 9

There are clear correlations and relationships here which show that thePotassium and Sodium concentrations did not arise at random. If theyare products of radioactive decay, where did they come from?

Remember that Strontium is produced by a fission pathway thatproceeds through the Noble Gas Krypton and then the Alkali MetalRubidium. Similarly, Barium is produced through Xenon and the AlkaliMetal Caesium. We know that Uranium fission favours these pathwaysthrough the Noble Gases - we will see later proof that Neon wasproduced along with the balancing Lead - we would also expect Argon.

Just as radioactive isotopes of Krypton and Xenon decay by betaparticle emission to produce Rubidium and Caesium, radioactiveisotopes of Neon and Argon also decay by beta emission to produceSodium and Potassium. We would indeed expect to find anomalouslevels of these elements present - what was found is again consistentwith the occurrence of nuclear fission.

If we plot [Zn] against [Na] and [K] in rank order, we obtain the following:

WTC

01-

02

WTC

01-

03

WTC

01-

14

WTC

01-

15

WTC

01-

16

WTC

01-

21

WTC

01-

22

WTC

01-

25

WTC

01-

27

WTC

01-

28

WTC

01-

20

WTC

01-

36

WTC

01-

08

WTC

01-

09

75

2075

4075

6075

8075

10075

12075pa

rts

per m

illio

nZn ppm

Na ppm

K ppm

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Zn, Na and KConcentration of Zn, Na and K

Source: USGS (Including Girder Coatings)

34 Ground Zero


FIGURE 10

There is a very strong correlation between [Zn] and [K].

Between [Zn] and [Na] there almost appear to be two relationships. Onthe one hand, as the concentration of Zinc increases, we see a linearincrease in the level of Sodium, but on the other as the level of Zincapproaches 1500ppm, the concentration of Sodium takes another routeto shoot up past 8000ppm to over 11,000ppm in one of the indoor dustsamples. Is there a way of accounting for this?

Yes there is. Potassium has 5 radioactive isotopes, which all decay in asimilar timescale, i.e. very quickly in a matter of hours or minutes. 4 ofthem decay by beta emission and only one by positron emission - whichmeans the majority of the Potassium will transmute into Calcium whichin turn will change into Scandium and Titanium. This is generally goingtowards Zinc and we will see later the strong correlation betweenTitanium and Zinc. (We could have equally used Titanium here incomparison to Sodium and Potassium, but we wanted to show the clearrelationship with an element classified by the USGS as a trace element,since Titanium was classified as a "Major Element" by the USGS).

However, Sodium has only two radioactive isotopes; one decays bybeta emission with a long 15 year half life to form Magnesium,Aluminium etc. while the other decays by positron emission (back toNeon) with a 2.6 year half life. This means that as the concentration ofthis Sodium isotope increases, it will anti-correlate with heavierelements such as Titanium, Zinc etc. - it is decaying back towards Neonand lighter elements while the other Sodium isotope, decaying muchmore slowly and therefore having relatively less impact on theproduction of its heavier element daughter products, will correlate withthe occurrence of heavier elements.

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000

Na,

K (p

pm)

Zinc (ppm)

Na ppm

K ppm

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Zn vs Na and KConcentration of Zn vs Na and K

(Including Girder Coatings)

Ground Zero 35

The Trace Elements

This is exactly what we see in Figure 10 - there appear to be twoSodiums, one that correlates with Zinc (heavier elements) and one thatgoes towards inverse proportionality - [Zn] actually decreases as [Na]increases. This fits the behaviour we would expect from the two Sodiumisotopes.

Other Trace Elements

We now examine the other Top 10 Trace Elements, many of which arewell known decay products of the nuclear fission pathways. Theirpresence in such high quantities in the WTC dust cannot be explainedby any other mechanism.

Cerium

In looking at Table 4 of the trace elements, we see peaks in theconcentration of Cerium at WTC 01-02 and 01-16, i.e. at the same twolocations as the Barium/Strontium peaks.

Cerium is a very rare element - yet over 100ppm was discovered atWTC 01-02 and 01-16, which is again an extraordinarily high level forthat element. Cerium is the second daughter product of Barium in thatdisintegration pathway, coming after Lanthanum

Figure 11 shows the concentration of Barium plotted against Cerium.

FIGURE 11

•

The Coefficient of Correlation between Barium and Cerium is 0.84.

The data points in fact fit a cubic relationship, in which the concentrationof Cerium is approximately equal to 10 times the cube root of the Bariumconcentration.

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000

Cer

ium

(ppm

)

Barium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ba vs CeConcentration of Ba vs Ce


36 Ground Zero


(EQ 7)

We show the data again below with the actual Barium concentrationnow also plotted against the Cerium value calculated by the abovemodel equation and a best fit curve to the actual data. The correlationbetween the actual Cerium values and the values predicted by thismodel is clearly of the same order.

FIGURE 12

What does this tell us? Since Cerium is the second daughter product ofdecay of Barium, we would expect the amount of Cerium present toincrease linearly with the concentration of Barium. The first part of thecurve, for [Ba] less than 1000ppm is more or less linear as expected.Why then does the relative concentration of Cerium fall at WTC-16where [Ba] was so high, at 3670ppm? This shows that at that location,new Barium was still being actively produced, with intense nuclearfission and decay of intermediate products still ongoing. There was notyet enough time for the Barium being produced to decay into itsdaughter products. The concentration of Uranium at this location wasnot the highest found though, which supports what we conjecturedbefore: the Barium and Zinc was not just produced by direct fission ofUranium but by Ternary fission and other intermediate decay steps fromthe other elements that were produced. Another factor that has to betaken into consideration is the presence of different isotopes of thefission products (Barium, Strontium) - we will discuss this later.

Since Cerium is the second daughter product of Barium, this highcorrelation between the Barium and Cerium concentrations in theexpected exponential relationship is further evidence that NuclearFission has taken place.

Ce[ ] = 10 • Ba[ ]3

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000

Cer

ium

(ppm

)

Barium (ppm)

[Ce] Actual

10*CubeRt[Ba]

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust Samples[Ba] vs [Ce] with Best Fit Curve[Ba] vs [Ce] with Best Fit Curve

Best Fit Curveto [Ce] actual

Ground Zero 37

The Trace Elements

Lanthanum

Lanthanum is the next element in the disintegration pathway of Barium,situated between Barium and Cerium.

The concentration of Barium versus Lanthanum is plotted below.

FIGURE 13

The graph is almost identical in form to the relationship between Bariumand Cerium. A similar inverse exponential (cubic) relationship is clearlyvisible. In this case, [La] is approximately equal to 5 times the cube rootof [Ba].

Lanthanum has a much shorter half life than Cerium: most of itsisotopes have a half life of only a few hours whereas

β

-

decay by Ceriumis measured in half life periods of a month to 10 months. Cerium’s

β

+

decay going back to Lanthanum occurs more quickly but Lanthanum’s

β

+

decay going back to Barium occurs in a similar timescale to that - afew hours - so we are left with the net effect of Lanthanum’s

β

-

decaybeing much quicker than that of Cerium, so the concentration of Ceriumremaining was higher than that of Lanthanum.

Cerium versus Lanthanum

Next we show the relationship between Lanthanum and Cerium. Wehave an almost perfect linear correlation between the two. This graph(Figure 14) confirms our two cubic models, which predict that theconcentration of Lanthanum produced should be half the concentrationof Cerium.

Therefore [Ce] = 2 x [La].

Given that Cerium follows Lanthanum in the fission pathway, that bothelements are extremely rare except in nuclear events and the

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000

Lant

hanu

m (p

pm)

Barium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ba vs LaConcentration of Ba vs La


38 Ground Zero


concentration of Lanthanum is almost perfectly correlated with theconcentration of Cerium, the occurrence of Nuclear Fission of Uraniumis the only possible explanation.

FIGURE 14

We show this data again below, including additionally the two very highGirder Coating values.

FIGURE 15

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140

Lant

hanu

m (p

pm)

Cerium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ce vs LaConcentration of Ce vs La

Not Including Girder Coating Samples

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400

Lant

hanu

m (p

pm)

Cerium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ce vs LaConcentration of Ce vs La

Including Girder Coating Samples

Ground Zero 39

The Trace Elements

These relationships in the data provide further overwhelming proof thatNuclear Fission of Uranium has taken place, with characteristicstatistical relationships between the quantities of the different elementspresent that are indicative of the fission pathways of Uranium.

Yttrium

Yttrium is also a very rare element and should not be present in dustfrom a collapsed office building. Yttrium is the next decay element afterStrontium. If we plot the concentration of Strontium against Yttrium, weobtain Figure 16.

FIGURE 16

Strontium 90 has a much longer half life (28.78 years) than most Bariumisotopes so we would not expect to see as high a concentration ofStrontium’s daughter products as those that are produced from Barium.This is in fact what we see - the concentration of Cerium (next daughterproduct to Barium) is higher than Yttrium, the next daughter product toStrontium.

Another factor is that different isotopes of these daughter elements areproduced with different half lives and, as before, they decay by differentmechanisms - electron (beta particle) emission and electron capture(EC). The USGS of course have not analysed which isotopes and whatproportions of those isotopes were present for each element - Barium,Strontium, Zinc, Cerium etc.

Although Sr 90 is the main Strontium isotope produced which decays by

β

-

emission, some Sr 82, 83 and 85 is produced as well which decay byEC into Rubidium. Different Yttrium isotopes also decay by

β

-

emissionand EC both into Zirconium and back into Strontium.

Examining Figure 16, we see what may look like two separate anddistinct relationships between Yttrium and Strontium. One set of pointsseems to indicate a linear increasing relationship between the Strontium

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500

Yttri

um (p

pm)

Strontium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Sr vs YConcentration of Sr vs Y


40 Ground Zero


and Yttrium concentration, while another set shows [Sr] reaching amaximum and decreasing again as [Y] increases (ignoring the outlierwith >3000ppm [Sr]). We have seen this pattern with Sodium and we willsee it again: the relationship where [Sr] decreases as [Y] increases canbe explained by the influence of Yttrium isotopes decaying by electronemission into elements of higher atomic number - i.e. Zirconium whilethe other line is formed by those Yttrium isotopes that decay by EC backinto Strontium - boosting the amount of Strontium present.

Also, if there was a significant time difference between the analysis ofthe samples, it would affect the comparison of results because Yttrium90 has a half life of only 2.67 days while Y91 has a half life of 58.5 days.

We know that some samples were collected on the evening of the 17thSeptember and some 24 hours later on the 18th September, which mayhave had an effect on Y90 levels in the two sets of dust samples byremoving them from the influence of the nuclear processes continuing inthe environment. A time delay in the analyses of the samples would alsohave a significant effect. 24 hours is 3/8ths of the half life period, sosome 23% of the Y90 present in the dust will decay away

1

in this time.Any Strontium 89 present would not be greatly affected by a delay of 1day since its half life is 52 days, so the corresponding [Sr] made up of[Sr90] + [Sr89] would not show a noticeable difference; [Y] made up of[Y89] + [Y90] would show a noticeable difference.

This may explain why in Figure 16 in the central cluster some of theYttrium concentrations were lower than others for a similar Strontiumconcentration - maybe there was a significant delay between the timesthe analyses were performed.

Overall, we can see that there is a marked correlation between [Sr] and[Y], with one outlier - WTC 01-16 where the concentration of Strontium(and Barium) peaked. This was as we have said evidently a locationwhere energetic nuclear processes were still ongoing. New Strontiumwas being actively produced and therefore the concentration of Yttriumwas relatively lower.

1. From N/N

o

= e

-

λ

t

Ground Zero 41

The Trace Elements

Chromium

The presence of Chromium is also a tell tale signature of a nuclearexplosion. Its concentration is shown plotted against Zinc and Vanadiumbelow.

FIGURE 17 CHROMIUM vs ZINC AND VANADIUM CONCENTRATION

There is a strong correlation between the Zinc and Chromiumconcentration. The Coefficient of Correlation is 0.89.

There is also an indication of a strong correlation between Chromiumand Vanadium with 6 points lying on an almost perfect exponentialcurve, with one outlier (WTC 01-03) of 42.5ppm where the Vanadiumconcentration reached its highest level.

Figure 18 below plots [Cr] against [Ni]. There is a strong cluster in thetwo concentrations showing a very homogenous distribution in theseelements.

FIGURE 18 CHROMIUM vs NICKEL

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

0 50 100 150 200 250

Vana

dium

(ppm

)Chromium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Cr vs VConcentration of Cr vs V

Outlier at WTC 01-03

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

0 50 100 150 200 250

Zinc

(ppm

)

Chromium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Cr vs ZnConcentration of Cr vs Zn

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

0 50 100 150 200 250

Nick

el (p

pm)

Chromium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Cr vs NiConcentration of Cr vs Ni

42 Ground Zero


Copper

This element is also indicative. If we plot the concentration of Copperagainst Zinc and Nickel, we obtain the graphs in Figure 19.

The concentration of Nickel was almost the same everywhere, exceptfor the peak in [Ni] of 88ppm matched by the [Cu] peak of 450ppm.

FIGURE 19

The Copper - Zinc relationship is very interesting, showing in fact twodistinct relationships again depending on isotopic composition. Thereare two radioactive isotopes of Copper (Cu64 and Cu67) with short halflives of 12.7 hours and 2.58 days respectively which decay into Zincisotopes. Two other isotopes

60

Cu and

61

Cu decay the other way bypositron (

β

+

) emission into Nickel - and in fact

64

Cu goes both ways, intoboth Nickel and Zinc. This would explain why there strongly appear tobe two Cu-Zn relationships.

The decay of radioactive Copper by beta particle (

β

-

) emission into Zincwould have been another source of the Zinc found in the WTC dust.

Titanium and Manganese

Titanium and Manganese are not present in trace quantities but in quitehigh concentrations and as we have discussed earlier, even if Titaniumhad been included as a pigment (TiO) in some of the concrete when itwas made this would be far from sufficient to account for the high levelsof Titanium found in the dust. However, it is interesting that there is apeak in Titanium concentration of 3900ppm at location WTC 01-02,where the Zinc reached its maximum of 2990ppm and many otherelements also peaked. Manganese also peaks with 1500ppm atWTC01-02 and WTC 01-25, which correlates with the two Zinc peaks of2990ppm and 1900ppm.

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450

Zinc

(ppm

)

Copper (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Cu vs ZnConcentration of Cu vs Zn

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450

Nic

kel (

ppm

)

Copper (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Cu vs NiConcentration of Cu vs Ni

Ground Zero 43

The Trace Elements

FIGURE 20

Figure 20 shows that once again, the high levels of Titanium andManganese detected were not naturally occurring: the correlations witheach other are too marked.

The main pathway we would expect for the production of Titanium wouldbe by beta decay of Argon, through Potassium, Calcium and Scandium.

Another possible mechanism for the production of the Titanium wouldbe by ternary fission of plutonium. Ordinary thermal nuclear reactorsalways produce plutonium when the non-fissile U238 in the fuel (whichis the majority of the Uranium in the reactor) absorbs neutrons: thisproduces Uranium 239 which then undergoes beta decay intoPlutonium, with atomic number 94.

Plutonium would then undergo ternary fission into Xenon, Argon andTitanium.

Another possibility is that the reactors under the Twin Towers were Fastreactors or Fast Fission Breeder Reactors. In this type of nuclearreactor, the fuel is made of a central plutonium core surrounded byUranium 238. As the central plutonium core is fissioned to produceenergy, the U238 jacket also captures neutrons and is converted into yetmore Plutonium: the reactor "breeds" more fuel than it uses.

One "advantage" of this reactor type is that since the plutonium can onlybe fissioned by fast neutrons, no moderator is required to slow themdown to produce slow neutrons, as required in an ordinary reactor. Thismeans the size of the fast breeder reactor is much smaller. This maywell have been a significant "advantage" for use in a clandestineunderground installation under the Twin Towers of the WTC.

WTC

01-

02

WTC

01-

03

WTC

01-

14

WTC

01-

15

WTC

01-

16

WTC

01-

21

WTC

01-

22

WTC

01-

25

WTC

01-

27

WTC

01-

28

WTC

01-

20

WTC

01-

36

WTC

01-

08

WTC

01-

09

75

575

1075

1575

2075

2575

3075

3575

4075

part

s pe

r mill

ion

Ti ppm

Zinc ppm

Mn ppm

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ti, Zn, MnConcentration of Ti, Zn, Mn

Source: USGS

44 Ground Zero


Uranium could also undergo ternary fission into Xenon, Argon andCalcium - with the Calcium then undergoing

β

-

decay (which is itsprimary mode) into Titanium: in fact it would also form from normalbinary fission of Uranium into Argon and Tungsten, with the Argon thendecaying into Potassium, Calcium, Scandium and Titanium as we saidbefore.

If we look at the Periodic Table of Elements, starting with Titanium atatomic number 22, we have the sequence Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn.

FIGURE 21 EXTRACT FROM PERIODIC TABLE

The transmutation of Titanium into the succeeding elements wouldoccur by emission of beta particles, as shown in Figure 2 for Bromineand Xenon. We see many of the elements found in anomalousquantities in this part of the Periodic Table, where the radioactiveisotopes of these "transition elements" as they are called interact incomplex decay patterns.

The concentration of Titanium versus Zinc and Chromium is shownbelow in Figure 22.

FIGURE 22

Again, there is a distinct correlation, with the concentration of all threemetals peaking at location WTC 01-02, which as we have seen was apeak for many of the metals found, even common ones such as iron andaluminium.

The concentration of Manganese plotted against Zinc, Lead andTitanium is shown in the following graphs.

Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn22 3029282726252423

0

50

100

150

200

250

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400

Chr

omiu

m (p

pm)

Titanium (ppm/10)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ti vs CrConcentration of Ti vs Cr

Not Including Girder Coating or Indoor Samples

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000

Zinc

(ppm

)

Titanium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ti vs ZnConcentration of Ti vs Zn

Not Including Girder Coating or Indoor Samples

Ground Zero 45

The Trace Elements

FIGURE 23

In all three cases we see an absolutely identical pattern. First, adecrease in [Zn], [Pb] and [Ti] as [Mn] increases, then at 1200ppm ofManganese (0.12%) there is an extraordinary increase in the quantity ofZinc, Lead and Titanium present in the dust. Finally, an asymptoticlevelling off for even higher levels of [Mn].

It is therefore very indicative indeed that we have these complexcorrelations and relationships between these different metals. Data ofthis type has probably never before seen the light of day, revealing thecomplex fission events and processes that take place in an energeticnuclear explosion. We can surmise that in the confined space of thenuclear blast, indeed not only ternary but quaternary and further levelsof fission have taken place, with daughter nuclei not just decaying byordinary alpha, beta or gamma radiation emission but literally beingfissioned again by the intense neutron radiation, to create a completesmorgasbord of the Periodic Table.

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600

Lead

(ppm

)

Manganese (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Mn vs PbConcentration of Mn vs Pb


0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600

Zinc

(ppm

)

Manganese (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Mn vs ZnConcentration of Mn vs Zn


0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600

Tita

nium

(ppm

)

Manganese (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ti vs MnConcentration of Ti vs Mn


46 Ground Zero


Lead

Lead is yet another product of nuclear fission. We would not expect tofind lead piping in a building of 1970s vintage, certainly not in quantitiessufficient to produce the high concentrations of Lead that were detected.

One of the frequent pathways for nuclear fission of Uranium is to aNoble Gas and the balancing element, which together add up to the 92protons in Uranium. This is what occurs with Barium and Strontium,where the balancing Noble Gas is Krypton and Xenon. Lead has anatomic number of 82. The balancing element with an atomic number of10 is Neon - a noble gas. Radioactive Lead is a well known product fromnuclear fission and we would not be surprised to find it in the fallout. The nuclear equation for fission of Uranium to Lead follows a preferredNoble Gas pathway:

(EQ 8)

There were two spikes measured in the concentration of Lead of over700ppm, at WTC01-02 and WTC 01-25; these two locations also hadthe two highest concentrations of Zinc (2990ppm and 1910ppm),Chromium (224ppm and 134ppm) and Manganese (1500ppm and1500ppm).

FIGURE 24

By inspection, we can see that there is a power relationship between theconcentration of Lead and Zinc and perhaps a linear relationshipbetween [Pb] and [Cr]. Referring back to Figure 23, we know that theremust be a close relationship between [Pb] and [Zn] because they bothhave an identical relationship to [Mn].

In Figure 25 we have plotted Lead against Copper and shown Copperagainst Zinc again for comparison (already shown in Figure 19 onpage 42).

92235U +0

1n→1024Ne + 82

210Pb +201n

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800

Zinc

(ppm

)

Lead (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Pb vs ZnConcentration of Pb vs Zn


0

50

100

150

200

250

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800

Chr

omiu

m (p

pm)

Lead (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Pb vs CrConcentration of Pb vs Cr

Ground Zero 47

The Trace Elements

FIGURE 25

We can see clearly that Zinc and Lead both have exactly the samerelationship to Copper.

These correlations show that the presence of the Lead is also indicativethat a nuclear explosion occurred.

We earlier commented that Copper transmutes into Zinc by beta decay.If we plot the concentration of Zinc, Lead and Copper together bylocation, the correlations can be seen in a different way. Particularlyinteresting is the dramatic fall in concentration of all these elements inthe girder coatings.

FIGURE 26

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800

Cop

per (

ppm

)

Lead (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Pb vs CuConcentration of Pb vs Cu

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000

Cop

per (

ppm

)

Zinc (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Zn vs CuConcentration of Zn vs Cu

WTC

01-

02

WTC

01-

03

WTC

01-

14

WTC

01-

15

WTC

01-

16

WTC

01-

21

WTC

01-

22

WTC

01-

25

WTC

01-

27

WTC

01-

28

WTC

01-

20

WTC

01-

36

WTC

01-

08

WTC

01-

09

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

part

s pe

r mill

ion

Zinc/10 ppm

Lead ppm

Copper ppm

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Zn/10, Pb, CuConcentration of Zn/10, Pb, Cu

Source: USGS

48 Ground Zero


In Figure 26, [Zn] has been divided by a factor of 10, to avoid losing allthe detail in the scaling if the

y

axis instead went up to 3000ppm. Thevariation in [Pb] is matched by the variation in [Zn] almost perfectlyacross all sampling locations, including the Indoor and Girder Coatingsamples.

The concentration of Copper, [Cu], follows that of [Zn] with one distinctexception at WTC 01-15. As we have already seen in Figure 19, thereseem to be two Cu - Zn relationships. If some of the Zinc was beingformed by beta decay of Copper, then the high [Cu] at WTC 01-15 couldreduce [Zn], since the formation of Zinc by that decay pathway would beretarded by material being held up at the Copper stage, before decayingon to Zinc. Therefore this graph along with the lower curve in Figure 19(right hand graph) does tend to confirm that some of the Zinc wasindeed being formed by beta decay of Copper.

This would at least be a small mercy, since the Zinc isotopes formedfrom Copper are stable - i.e. they are not radioactive.

Ground Zero 49

The Trace Elements

Antimony

Antimony is a rare toxic metal used in engineering in small quantities forhardening other metals (e.g. in bearings). The variation in concentrationof Antimony, [Sb] found in the dust very closely mirrors the level ofBarium but then falls to practically nothing in the girder coatings.

Figure 27 shows the level of Antimony measured at each locationagainst the Barium concentration divided by 10.

FIGURE 27

Arranged in rank order, the data is presented as follows, both includingand not including the massive spike in concentration at WTC 01-16.

FIGURE 28

WTC

01-

02

WTC

01-

03

WTC

01-

14

WTC

01-

15

WTC

01-

16

WTC

01-

21

WTC

01-

22

WTC

01-

25

WTC

01-

27

WTC

01-

28

WTC

01-

20

WTC

01-

36

WTC

01-

08

WTC

01-

09

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

part

s pe

r mill

ion Ba/10 ppm

Sb ppm

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ba/10 and SbConcentration of Ba/10 and Sb

Source: USGS

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400

Ant

imon

y (p

pm)

Barium/10 (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ba/10 vs SbConcentration of Ba/10 vs Sb

Including WTC 01-16

Girder Coatings

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Ant

imon

y (p

pm)

Barium/10 (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Ba/10 vs SbConcentration of Ba/10 vs Sb

Not Including WTC 01-16

Girder Coatings

50 Ground Zero


Antimony has an atomic number of 51 and atomic weights ranging from119 to 127. Barium has an atomic number of 56 with atomic weightsranging from 128 to 140. Some radioactive Xenon isotopes couldtransmute into Antimony via Iodine and Tellurium by electron capture,whereas as we know, Barium is formed from Xenon by electron (betaparticle) emission - so we would expect a common source, isotopes ofXenon, for both the Barium and Antimony.

(EQ 9)

The evident close correlation between Barium and Antimony in theabove graphs is therefore very logical and can be explained by thenuclear chemistry of Equation 9.

There is also a very intriguing relationship between Antimony andMolybdenum.

FIGURE 29

This is clearly not a random distribution - there is in fact an almostperfect linear relationship between [Sb] and [Mo], with the usualexception of one sample where the Antimony concentration wasexceedingly high at 148ppm: WTC 01-16 again.

The atomic number of Antimony is 51; the atomic number ofMolybdenum is 42. Together this makes 93 while Uranium has anatomic number of 92. Tin and Molybdenum are well known fissionproducts. It seems very likely that some of the Uranium indeed fissioned

54125Xe + e-→ 53

125I

53125I + e-→ 52

125Te

52125Te + e-→ 51

125Sb

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

Mol

ybde

num

(ppm

)

Antimony (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Sb vs MoConcentration of Sb vs Mo


Ground Zero 51

The Trace Elements

into Tin (with atomic number 50) and Molybdenum (42) and the Tin thendecayed by beta emission into Antimony.

Again, Figure 29 is a very telling graph indeed.

The Girder Coatings

In the earlier graph (Figure 26 on page 47), [Zn], [Pb] and [Cu] are allmuch lower in the Girder Coatings than in the dust, both indoor andoutdoor. Referring to Table 2, we can see that a number of otherelements also had their lowest levels in the girder coatings: Antimony,Molybdenum, Cadmium.On the other hand, we saw earlier that the concentration of Cerium,Yttrium and Lanthanum are all an order of magnitude higher in thegirder insulation coatings than in the dust. In fact, in the second girder atWTC 01-09, [Ce], [Y] and [La] at 356ppm, 243ppm and 175ppm are 6times as high as the lowest levels recorded for these elements in thedust, far exceeding "trace" levels. Some other elements also recordedtheir highest levels in the girder coatings: Nickel in particular with202ppm at WTC 01-08, about 10 times as high as all the othermeasurements for Nickel - but then [Ni] falls back again in the secondgirder coating, WTC 01-09.

This is illustrated below in Figure 30 and Figure 31. The last two datapoints on the

x

axis at WTC 01-08 and WTC 01-09 are the two girdercoatings.

FIGURE 30

WTC

01-

02

WTC

01-

03

WTC

01-

14

WTC

01-

15

WTC

01-

16

WTC

01-

21

WTC

01-

22

WTC

01-

25

WTC

01-

27

WTC

01-

28

WTC

01-

20

WTC

01-

36

WTC

01-

08

WTC

01-

09

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

part

s pe

r mill

ion

Ce ppm

Y ppm

La ppm

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesCerium, Yttrium, LanthanumCerium, Yttrium, Lanthanum

Source: USGS

52 Ground Zero


FIGURE 31

Judging from the USGS map (Figure 36 on page 59), location WTC 01-09 was the closest sampling location to the towers. It is situated about20 metres to the west of the North Tower (WTC 1).

As we have already hypothesised, the nuclear blast may haveimpregnated the girder coatings with the initial fission products Bariumand Strontium. These would then have partially decayed away so thatby the time of the analysis, high concentrations of their rare daughterproducts (Ce, Y, La) were trapped in the coating.

Looking back at Figure 7 on page 29, we see that there are two placeswhere [Zn] is lower than [Sr] and [Ba]: at location WTC 01-16 and in thegirder coatings. The high levels of Cerium, Lanthanum and Yttriumfound in the girder coatings are also consistent with the still fairly highStrontium and Barium levels in the girders: so why should the level ofZinc be lower in the girders and at WTC 01-16, given that otherwise Zincis so closely linked to Barium?

The answer may be that Bromine, a fission fragment produced as youwill remember by the initial fission of Uranium, decays by

β

-

emissioninto Strontium by only 3 decay steps - and we know that Strontium istightly coupled to Barium, since Barium is produced from the otherfission fragment Xenon (see Figure 2 on page 7) - while Zinc isproduced from the Bromine fragment the other way by

β

+

emission in 5steps. Therefore depending on the isotopic mixture produced and thehalf lives of all the intermediary products, when very active decay is stillongoing in a sample which recently still had a high Uraniumconcentration, we are seeing a lot of Barium and Strontium beingproduced while Zinc has not yet formed: but later on (or in sampleswhich are not as "hot") as the Barium and Strontium decay away,

WTC

01-

02

WTC

01-

03

WTC

01-

14

WTC

01-

15

WTC

01-

16

WTC

01-

21

WTC

01-

22

WTC

01-

25

WTC

01-

27

WTC

01-

28

WTC

01-

20

WTC

01-

36

WTC

01-

08

WTC

01-

09

0

50

100

150

200

250

part

s pe

r mill

ion

Cr ppm

Ni ppm

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Cr and NiConcentration of Cr and Ni

Source: USGS

Ground Zero 53

The Trace Elements

whatever pathways led to Zinc now predominate and create a high levelof Zinc in the dust.

In fact, the analysis should be done the other way around: there is verylittle if any data publicly available on what mixture of fallout, fissionproducts, isotopes and stable end products is produced when an atomicbomb explodes or in this case when a nuclear reactor explodes in theseconditions. The data is showing us what did happen. It will be used tocalibrate and refine predictive models.

Another intriguing fact is that the concentration of Nickel and Chromiumpeaked in the first girder coating (WTC 01-08), particularly the Nickel,but fell again in the second girder coating. This could be explained byhypothesising that the first girder was contaminated with stainless steel,which contains both nickel and chromium but the second girder was not.

Whatever the physical mechanisms might be which account for thesefindings, the underlying mathematical correlations are self evident andlead ineluctably to the deduction that a nuclear explosion must haveoccurred to account for the presence of these elements.

54 Ground Zero


Uranium and Thorium

Finally we come to the detection of measurable quantities of Thoriumand Uranium in the dust from the WTC, elements which only exist inradioactive form.

The graph below plots the concentration of Thorium and Uraniumdetected at each sampling location. Again the last two locationsWTC01-08 and 01-09 are for the two girder coating samples.

FIGURE 32

The Uranium concentration follows the same pattern as Thorium,although the graph scale does not show this markedly. [U] follows thedip in [Th] at WTC 01-03 and 01-16 but the highest concentration ofUranium also matches Thorium in the second girder coating, WTC 01-09 at 7.57ppm.

7.57ppm of Uranium greatly exceeds normal trace element levels.

The second girder contained 30.7ppm of Thorium, 6 times as high asthe lowest level of that element detected.

Thorium is a radioactive element formed from Uranium by

α

decay. It isvery rare and should not be present in building rubble at all.

The Thorium picture also mirrors that found for Yttrium (see Figure 30).The concentration of both elements dips at WTC 01-03 and 01-16(where so many other elements peaked) but in the two girder coatings(WTC01-08, 01-09) is nearly an order of magnitude higher than in thedust samples.

WTC

01-

02

WTC

01-

03

WTC

01-

14

WTC

01-

15

WTC

01-

16

WTC

01-

21

WTC

01-

22

WTC

01-

25

WTC

01-

27

WTC

01-

28

WTC

01-

20

WTC

01-

36

WTC

01-

08

WTC

01-

09

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

part

s pe

r mill

ion

Th ppm

U ppm

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Th and UConcentration of Th and U

Source: USGS

Ground Zero 55

The Trace Elements

[Th] is plotted against [U] below.

FIGURE 33

The high correlation between [Th] and [U] is self evident.

The presence of these two elements in such high concentrations(particularly in the two girder coatings at WTC 01-08 and 01-09) in sucha close mathematical relationship is further incontrovertible evidencethat a nuclear event has taken place.

As we said earlier, Thorium is formed from Uranium by

α

decay. An

α

particle is the same as a Helium nucleus, so this means we have one ofthe favoured fission pathways: Uranium fissioning into a Noble Gas andthe balancing element, in this case Helium and Thorium:

(EQ 10)

If the Helium formed follows the same pattern as Krypton and Xenon(which decay by beta emission through Strontium and Barium), then wewould expect to find Lithium and Beryllium, the next elements afterHelium in the Periodic Table, in quantities that correlate with Thorium.

The USGS did measure the Lithium concentration in the dust: [Th] isplotted against [Li] below in Figure 34, both including and excluding thetwo girder coating samples.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Ura

nium

(ppm

)

Thorium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Th vs UConcentration of Th vs U


92235U+0

1n→24He+ 90

232Th

56 Ground Zero


FIGURE 34

The graph of [Th] vs [Li] including the girder coatings, has exactly thesame form as Figure 33, showing [Th] vs [U] also including the girdercoatings. Without the two girder coatings, the correlation of [Th] to [Li] inthe dust is completely linear.

We therefore have compelling evidence that this fission pathway ofUranium to Thorium and Helium, with subsequent decay of the Heliuminto Lithium, has indeed taken place.

Conclusion

It is out of the question that all these correlations which are the signatureof a nuclear explosion could have occurred by chance.

The presence of rare trace elements such as Cerium, Yttrium andLanthanum is enough to raise eyebrows in themselves, let alone inquantities of 50ppm to well over 100ppm. When the quantities then varywidely from place to place but still correlate with each other accordingto the relationships expected from nuclear fission, it is beyond alldoubt that the variations in concentration are due to that samecommon process of nuclear fission.

When we find Barium and Strontium present, in absolutely astronomicalconcentrations of over 400ppm to over 3000ppm, varying from place toplace but varying in lockstep and according to known nuclearrelationships - the implications are of the utmost seriousness.

The presence of Thorium and Uranium correlated to each other by aclear mathematical power relationship - and to other radionucleidedaughter products - leaves nothing more to be said.

This type of data has probably never been available to the public before.It is an unprecedented insight into the action of a nuclear device.Nuclear weapon scientists around the world will have seized this data toanalyse it and determine exactly what type of device produced it.

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

0 2 4 6 8 10 12

Lith

ium

(ppm

)

Thorium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Th vs LiConcentration of Th vs Li


0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Lith

ium

(ppm

)

Thorium (ppm)

WTC Dust SamplesWTC Dust SamplesConcentration of Th vs LiConcentration of Th vs Li


Ground Zero 57

The USGS Interpretation

3.6 The USGS Interpretation

Although the USGS presented the raw data from their ChemicalAnalysis in their report, they did not present the logical conclusions thathave to be drawn from it. In fact, the most telling data was “buried”where it would be missed by the casual reader. Only by looking throughthe actual table of data measurements themselves and analysing it aswe have done will the reader discover the true implications of that data.

It is difficult not to draw the conclusion that the USGS did not wish todraw attention to the presence of Strontium in the dust, since Strontiumis a well known “buzzword” that the general public associate withnuclear explosions.

The word “Strontium” only appears in two places in the USGS report.The first place is in “Chemistry Figure 1”, shown below in Figure 35,showing the concentration of all elements measured at the WTC site.The second place is in the table of data itself (http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-010429/chem1/ WTCchemistrytable.html).

“Chemistry Figure 1” is described by the USGS as follows:

"Plot showing the concentration ranges (colored boxes) and means(horizontal white bars) for major and trace elements in samples ofWTC dusts and girder coatings. Several samples had arsenicconcentrations below the analytical detection limits, indicated on thegraph by the arrow extending downward from the detection limitconcentration. Concentrations of some elements (such as tin) werenot determined in these samples. For comparison, 1 percent equals10,000 parts per million. "

58 Ground Zero


FIGURE 35 USGS MAJOR AND TRACE ELEMENTS

The column for Strontium does not stand out among all the otherelements. Strontium is the 13th column from the left.

We will not reproduce the data table here again. The reader has to lookdown to the 16th data entry to find Strontium (see Table 1).

In “Chemistry Figure 4”, shown below in Figure 36, the USGS presentthe main trace elements discovered on a map depicting each samplinglocation.

The USGS describe “Chemistry Figure 4” as follows (emphasis added):

“Map of lower Manhattan showing (as stacked bar charts) variations inconcentration (in parts per million) of some

predominant

traceelements of WTC dust and girder coating samples. Dust samplescollected indoors are indicated by the single hatch pattern and girdercoating samples by the cross-hatch pattern; all others are dustsamples collected outdoors.”

“Chemistry Figure 4” is supposed to be showing the

predominant

tracemetals. However, even though the Strontium concentration

exceeded

that of Barium at nearly all locations, Strontium has not been shown onthe graphic, while the Barium has been shown.

Ground Zero 59

The USGS Interpretation

FIGURE 36 USGS PREDOMINANT TRACE ELEMENTS DISCOVERED

Barium is not widely known as a radioactive element, whereas it is muchmore common knowledge that Strontium is a product of nuclearexplosions. A global programme to monitor Strontium 90 levels in themilk teeth of children was started in the 1960s to monitor the effects offallout from the nuclear testing of the period. Most countries have nowstopped testing for Sr90, but a renewed disturbing increase in Strontium90 levels in the teeth of US children since the beginning of the 1990shas recently been made public

1

.

60 Ground Zero


(The implication of this is that nuclear fission products are again beingreleased into the environment from an unacknowledged source orsources).

In their discussion of the chemical analysis results

1

, the USGS make thefollowing statement:

"With the exception of one sample that is high in barium (WTC01-16),the trace metals barium, lead, copper, and chromium are present inconcentrations of hundreds of parts per million."

For any chemist the use of the word "Barium" by itself would set alarmbells ringing but the USGS omit the fact that the Strontium concentrationat WTC 01-16 was almost as high as the Barium concentration, bothwere in fact over 3000 ppm and that at every other location theStrontium concentration in fact

exceeded

the Barium concentration.

The above remark is also disingenuous since a concentration of"hundreds of parts per million" for Barium is in any case astronomical -again, to a knowledgeable person, this sentence rings a loud alarm bell.

It is clear that the USGS intentionally omitted to mention the word"Strontium" anywhere in the text of their report or on the main graphic“Chemistry Figure 4” which presents the predominant trace metalanalysis. This would have immediately drawn attention to the fact thatthere had been a nuclear explosion, while as stated above, lessattention is likely to be drawn to the word "Barium".

The only places the word “Strontium” appears are in the body of thedata table itself - where one has to look down into the trace elementsto see it - and buried as column 13 in "Chemistry Figure 1". So to aquick glance through, the word “Strontium” with its strongpsychological overtones is very likely to be missed.

The USGS also fail to mention on their discussion of the Trace ElementsAnalysis the presence of not hundreds but thousands of parts permillion of Zinc. The Zinc concentration is shown on "Chemistry Figure 4"(our Figure 36 above) where it might be noted by the astute observerbut it is not discussed. Nor is the anomaly of the very high Titaniumconcentration discussed. The location of the scale on the graph makes itdifficult to read any data from this graph at all - it raises more questionsthan it answers.

Conclusion

One cannot criticise the USGS for not stating that the WTC had beensubjected to a nuclear explosion or for not drawing attention to theStrontium in their report. They would probably have been immediately

1. "Unexplained Increase in Strontium 90 in US Children", Le Monde, P12, 18/11/031. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/chem1/

Ground Zero 61

Discussion and Analysis

censored or intimidated if they had tried to do so. Perhaps they werecensored. In any case, any chemist reading the report can easily seethe Barium highlighted and would be immediately alerted by itspresence.

In fact, it is known that the EPA was heavily intimidated and interferedwith to stop them responding properly to the disaster

1

. It was impossiblefor the USGS to do any more than they did.

On the contrary, the USGS have done humanity a great service byhaving the courage to publish the data, in plain sight for those who knowwhat they are looking at and know how to interpret it.

Drawing attention to the Barium but not the Strontium was a more subtleway of motivating anybody reading the report to look in more detail atthe underlying data.

3.7 Discussion and Analysis

The Fallout Characteristics

It is clear from the above analysis that the source of the Barium andStrontium in the WTC dust cannot be due to a general presence inbuilding material, since in this case the concentrations would not showenormous spikes at a few locations. The concentration would be fairlysimilar across all locations, as it is for the common elements. Indeed,any building with these concentrations of the highly toxic (and in thiscase radioactive) elements Strontium and Barium in its structure couldnever have been built because the construction crew would havebecome seriously ill first.

Equally, the presence of these greatly elevated levels of Strontium andBarium cannot be due to some unknown chemical stockpile in thebuilding. In that case, there would be no wide dispersal, just a localiseddeposit of wherever the stockpile came to rest. In any case, thehypothesis of a secret chemical hoard of Barium and Strontium in acommercial office building, of the size required to produce these highconcentrations, would be an outrageous breach of health and safetyregulations and worthy of investigation in its own right. The correlatedconcentrations of Barium and Strontium enable that impossiblehypothesis to be discounted.

In addition to the Barium and Strontium, so many rare radionucleidesare present that are characteristic products of nuclear fission, thatnothing can explain them away.

The final analysis showing the presence of Thorium and Uranium issuperfluous but adds absolutely definitive corroboration.

1. “Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero”, The Sierra Club, 2004

62 Ground Zero


The only explanation that is possible - and indeed the scientificallyinescapable conclusion - is that a large scale fission chain reaction ofUranium 235 took place in the locality, releasing Strontium, Barium andmany other radionucleides into the environment as daughter products ofUranium fission.

In other words - a Nuclear Explosion.

We can see that the initial quantity of Uranium 235 present in thenuclear device underwent fission, including the two most well knownpathways to the first relatively long lived daughter nuclei of Barium andStrontium. The concentrations would not be equal since the two fissionpathways are not followed equally; however the concentrations wouldbe directly proportional to each other since a certain proportion of theUranium will follow the Strontium pathway and another proportion willfollow the Barium pathway. This is what the data shows.

The presence of large quantities of other well known daughterproducts in correlated quantities makes the case overwhelming,beyond any shadow of a doubt whatsoever that a nuclear explosionoccurred.

The complexity of the other relationships are also what we would expectfrom a high energy nuclear explosion rather than the low energy fissionin a controlled reactor. Fission did not stop with two fission fragments -many of these were fissioned in turn into smaller atoms by the intenseconcentrated neutron radiation in and underneath the building.

WTC 01-16 and 01-02

These two sampling locations had the highest concentrations ofradionucleides.

WTC 01-02 is at the tip of Manhattan on the East River side. WTC 01-16is about 0.15 miles east of Tower 1, behind Building 7.

The debris map produced by the USGS shows that most of the dust wasblown to the west, covering Manhattan between the WTC and theHudson River. Why these two particular locations should show suchhigh peaks we cannot say - but the fact that they do and that so manyradionucleides peaked at these locations is a major part of the evidencethat the correlations do not come about by chance. Whatever nuclearprocesses were going on at those locations, it affected all the fissionproducts as we would expect.

Permitted Barium and Strontium Concentrations

Strontium and Barium are extremely toxic elements and are not found inbuilding products.

Permitted exposure levels to toxic substances in the building industryare regulated in the USA by OHSA. The permitted levels of exposure to

Ground Zero 63


various substances for building and construction workers is specified in“Contaminants for Construction” section:

“1926.55 - Gases, vapours, fumes, dusts, and mists.”

(a) Exposure of employees to inhalation, ingestion, skin absorption,or contact with any material or substance at a concentration abovethose specified in the "Threshold Limit Values of AirborneContaminants for 1970" of the American Conference of GovernmentalIndustrial Hygienists, shall be avoided. See Appendix A to thissection.

http://www.osha.gov/Publications/Homebuilders/Homebuilders.html

The limit for Barium exposure is listed at 0.5 mg per cubic metre of air(since it comes beneath the permitted 0.5ppm level in dust and istherefore shown volumetrically) with a permitted maximum combinedcontent of

15ppm

of dust. Therefore anything above 0.5 mg per cubicmetre is a contaminant and protective equipment/clothing must beemployed.

Therefore the maximum permitted level of Barium in a building orconstruction environment is 15ppm in dust - and less than 0.5ppm in acubic metre of air.

The dust from the WTC contained 400ppm to 800ppm of Barium, withone sample containing 3670ppm.

The OHSA rules list over 400 hazardous substances to which buildingworkers might be exposed. It does not even list Strontium because it isso unlikely that one would ever come across it in a normal buildingenvironment.

If Strontium was listed, it would have a safety limit lower than Bariumbecause of its particularly dangerous effects. Strontium replacesCalcium in the bones and teeth. Prolonged exposure leads to brittlebones and replacement of the bone structure with a radioactivesubstance.

The Enhanced Radiation Bomb

An aspect of great concern is the high concentration of Zinc that waspresent in the dust. Where did it come from - and why does the variationin its concentration vary in a linear relationship with the concentration ofBarium?

Clearly, if the source of the Strontium and Barium is a nuclearexplosion, the source of the Zinc must also be that same nucleardevice, since, as the reader has seen, the variation in Zincconcentration mirrors the variation in Barium concentration.

Do nuclear devices produce Zinc?

64 Ground Zero


Nuclear reactors do produce some Zinc 65 but it is not a major fissionproduct. However, there is not a great deal of data available on whathappens when a nuclear reactor explodes like a bomb and anyvariations in the characteristics of the fission products that are producedcompared with the normal controlled chain reaction.

However, there is a class of nuclear device that would produce a largequantity of Zinc: the Enhanced Radiation Bomb.

In 1950, the physicist Leo Szilard pointed out the theoretical possibilityof building an atomic bomb that would be particularly lethal and hassince been called the "Doomsday Device": the Cobalt Bomb.

In this type of weapon, the nuclear device is "salted" with a coating orjacket of another element. When the bomb explodes, the coating issubjected to intense radiation and is transmuted into a highlyradioactive isotope of the element, which is then dispersed throughoutthe fallout zone of the bomb. The radiation produced by the device isenhanced, so that in addition to its explosive effects, the radiationdamage to life is also magnified.

Different effects can be produced by using different salting agents.

In the Cobalt Bomb, a coating of Cobalt 59 would be used. This istransmuted into radioactive Cobalt 60 by the intense radiationexposure of the blast. With a half life of 5.26 years, the area affectedby the fallout would be dangerously radioactive for many years. To somedegree, the entire globe would be affected by the fallout.

Gold can be used to produce a high radiation zone for a few days, whiletantalum and zinc produce a radiation zone that lasts for a few months.

Zinc 64 is seen as the "ideal" military salting agent, since it is cheapand produces intense radiation for only a few months. Some 48% ofnatural Zinc is composed of Zinc 64, the rest having atomic weights of66 and above which is not useful for this application. When the bombexplodes, the Zn 64 is transmuted into highly radioactive Zn 65 tocontaminate the fallout zone.

From The Nuclear Weapons FAQ by Carey Sublette

1

:

"Zinc has been proposed as an alternate candidate for the"doomsday role". The advantage of Zn-64 is that its faster decayleads to greater initial intensity. Disadvantages are that since it makesup only half of natural zinc, it must either be isotopically enriched orthe yield will be cut in half; that it is a weaker gamma emitter than Co-60, putting out only one-fourth as many gammas for the same molarquantity; and that substantially amounts will decay during the world-wide dispersal process. Assuming pure Zn-64 is used, the radiation

1. www.fas.og/nuke/new/nwfaq

Ground Zero 65


intensity of Zn-65 would initially be twice as much as Co-60. Thiswould decline to being equal in 8 months, in 5 years Co-60 would be110 times as intense. "

Militarily useful radiological weapons would use local (as opposed toworld-wide) contamination, and high initial intensities for rapid effects.

Prolonged contamination is also undesirable. In this light Zn-64 ispossibly better suited to military applications than cobalt, butprobably inferior to tantalum or gold. As noted above ordinary "dirty"fusion-fission bombs have very high initial radiation intensities andmust also be considered radiological weapons.

If the Zinc in the WTC dust was produced by the nuclear explosionitself - i.e. as part of the fission of Uranium, it would in fact largely behighly radioactive Zinc 65 that would be produced.

However, there is far more Zinc in the WTC dust than any of the otherusual fission products (i.e Strontium and Barium). Therefore, if thatmuch Zinc was normally produced by an atomic bomb, there wouldbe no need to salt them with more.

In addition to the ratio of Zinc present compared with the other fissionproducts is the absolute quantity of Zinc (and indeed, the other fissionproducts). Therefore, the presence of so much Zinc - between 1000ppmand 2000ppm and up to 3000ppm - indicates that indeed either a saltednuclear bomb was used or some other nuclear process was used toproduce a very large amount of Zinc, as well as a very large amount ofStrontium and Barium.

Where else could the Zinc have come from?

While the normal radioactive fission from a reactor or atomic bomb doesproduce Zinc 65, it is not a major product and the USGS discoveredmore Zinc present than any other trace element. At a minimum of1000ppm of Zinc in the dust, with an estimated mass of concrete of100,000 tonnes per tower, the mass of Zinc present would be in theorder of at least 200 tonnes. Where could such a large quantity of Zinchave come from?

We put forward here three possibilities for consideration.

1.

Radon Fission (or Ternary Fission)

2.

Zinc Injection

3.

Liquid Zinc Coolant

Radon Fission

We saw before that the concentration of Zinc in the WTC dust correlatedvery closely with the concentration of Barium. The relationship wasalmost linear, with an equation relating the two of:

[Zn] = 4.4[Ba] - 538 or [Zn] = 3[Ba] to a close approximation.

66 Ground Zero


The fact that the Barium and Zinc concentrations are linearly relatedindicates that they have a common source - that they were producedlargely by a common process.

The atomic number of Barium is 56 and the atomic number of Zinc is 30.If an atom of Radon, with atomic number 86 was to fission, it could splitinto Barium and Zinc.

Radon is a Noble Gas and we know that when Uranium fissions, itfavours pathways that pass through the Noble Gases. If Uranium withatomic number 92 splits into Radon with atomic number 86, thebalancing atom will be Carbon with atomic number 6. Carbon 14 is awell known radioisotope produced by nuclear fission, and Radon is alsodefinitely produced by fission of Uranium.

Radon is a naturally radioactive gas - all of its isotopes are radioactiveand they all have short half lives under 4 days at the most. Since it isonly 6 protons and 13 or 14 nuclear particles lighter than Uranium, itmay also undergo fission like Uranium if subjected to neutronbombardment. This would be Ternary Fission of Uranium and would beexpected under the intense energetic conditions of an undergroundnuclear blast.

So in the confined space of a nuclear reactor underground, it is possiblethat the Radon gas produced did not simply decay but underwentfurther nuclear fission itself into Barium and Zinc.

The process would look like this:

(EQ 11)

There would probably be a very large energy release from the fission ofRadon and many excess neutrons would be produced - maybe 15 ormore. If Zinc 65 and Barium 140 were produced, 16 spare neutronswould be released. This or a similar mechanism might be used in aneutron bomb.

If the large quantities of Zinc detected in the WTC dust were produced inthis way, the Zinc would certainly have been composed of radioactiveisotopes.

It is difficult to comprehend the mindset of those who would wish todesign a nuclear weapon to do this. Not only would it be an enhancedradiation weapon designed to produce large quantities of neutronradiation - i.e. a Neutron Bomb - it would be a doubly enhancedradiation weapon that added high intensity Zn 65 radiation to its effects.

How much Uranium would be required to produce 200 tonnes of Zinc?

92235U+0

1n→221Rn+14C

86221Rn+0

1n→56?Ba+30

?Zn +?01n + ?MeV

Ground Zero 67


If all the Uranium in the reactor fissioned through one precursor (Radon)to Barium and Zinc, 723 tonnes of Uranium would be required. In fact,only a fraction of the Uranium would fission through this pathway, so farmore Uranium would have to be originally present to create 200 tonnesof Zinc. Far more than 1000 tonnes would originally have been present -probably over 2000 tonnes.

This provides corroborative evidence that not one but two nuclearreactors exploded underneath the WTC. We will discuss this later in thereport.

Zinc Injection

A technique known as Zinc Injection is widely used in Boiling WaterReactors (BWRs) across the world. All of the commercial nuclearreactors in the USA are of the BWR or Pressurised Water Reactor(PWR) type and all of the BWRs in the USA use Zinc Injection.

In Zinc Injection with a BWR, Zinc Oxide is injected into the watersystem which cools the reactor and which produces the steam for thesteam turbines. This is done for three reasons:

1.

To reduce the radiation exposure to the plant personnel from radioactive Cobalt 60.

2.

To reduce corrosion and improve the mechanical properties of the stainless steel water piping and systems.

3.

To improve cooling.

The technology is officially being evaluated for PWRs as well acrossthe world, using Zinc Acetate instead of Zinc Oxide. The main cause ofradioactivity exposure to the personnel in a PWR is Cobalt 60, so theuse of Zinc Injection promises to reduce this danger.

Stainless Steel contains Nickel. Under exposure to beta radiation fromthe reactor, the Nickel 58 in the stainless steel pipes, heatexchangers, condensers etc. which form part of the power plant istransmuted into Cobalt 58, which in turn transmutes into Cobalt 60.These are both highly radioactive and dangerous isotopes.Therefore, Zinc Oxide is introduced into the coolant water. Thisdisplaces the Cobalt from the stainless steel and forces it out into thecoolant water, where it can be filtered out. This reduces the long termradiation hazard to the personnel on site.

Over time, one can see that Zinc will build up both in the alloystructure of the stainless steel itself and as “fur” or scale on theinsides of the tubing.

Over a lifetime of 30 or 40 years, perhaps a significant proportion ofthe Nickel in the stainless steel may be replaced with Zinc.

However, the Zinc Oxide used in reactors is Depleted Zinc

1

- that is tosay the 48.8% of natural Zinc made up of the Zinc 64 isotope is largelyremoved to prevent its conversion into dangerous Zinc 65 by neutronradiation from the reactor. Therefore if the reactor went critical, most of

68 Ground Zero


the Zinc present in the cooling system should not produce Zinc 65 orother dangerous Zinc isotopes. (Some radioactive Zn 69 may beproduced from natural Zn 68). The concentration of ZnO used in thewater coolant is also very low - in the parts per billion.

Therefore it seems unlikely that the Zinc in the WTC dust could havecome from Zinc injected into the cooling system of the reactor, even if ithad built up over the years in the associated stainless steel equipment.

Liquid Metal Coolant

Another, more speculative possibility is that certain experimental fastbreeder reactors might be using liquid depleted Zinc as the coolant.

It is well known that the “civilian” Fast Breeder Reactors (FBRs) underdevelopment all over the world at the moment use liquid sodium as themain coolant, which in turn heats water to drive the steam turbines.

However, the Russians have used molten Lead (Pb) to cool theirnuclear submarine reactors since the 1950s. They are currentlydeveloping a new reactor design based on this technology (BREST)and the USA has plans for a range of reactors using liquid lead coolantas part of the 4th Generation Nuclear Reactor program now underwayworld-wide. This includes the SSTAR (Small Sealed TransportableAutonomous Reactor) which would be a small liquid lead cooledreactor producing less than 200MW of power. The physical size ofthe SSTAR units is said to be 15m high by 5m in diameter, weighing 500tonnes, not including the electrical power generation equipment

1

.

This is one of the attractions of the liquid lead technology: it favourssmall reactors for ships, submarines, desalination plants and other localarea applications.

1. Depleted Zinc Products, EP-SSCM-64D2A, 17/7/02 Eagle Picher Technologies LLC. Note: the concentration of Sr, Ba and other trace metals in these ZnO pellets is less than 10ppm.1. "US Plans Portable Nuclear Power Plants", New Scientist, 3/9/04

Ground Zero 69


FIGURE 37 LIQUID LEAD FAST REACTOR

A nuclear reactor under the WTC and Manhattan would probably havebeen relatively small - certainly smaller than a normal power station butmore like a nuclear submarine or nuclear ship reactor.

Could liquid depleted Zinc have been used as the coolant? What wouldbe its advantages over Sodium or Lead?

The cooling properties of a liquid metal coolant depend primarily on itsthermal conductivity.

Sodium has a low melting point of 371K and a high thermalconductivity of 141 Wm

-1

K

-1

but a liquid density of only 928 kgm

-3

, soquite a high volume of it is required. Liquid Sodium is also verydangerous due to its high corrosiveness and reactivity with water.

Lead has a higher melting point of 600K, a poor thermal conductivity of35 Wm

-1

K

-1

but a high density of 10,678 kgm

-3

so only a relatively smallvolume of it is required. Linear expansion problems with tubing,pipework etc. is also therefore reduced.

Zinc has a melting point of 693K, which is not much higher than Leadand a somewhat lower density of 6577 kg m

-3

but a thermalconductivity of 116 Wm

-1

K

-1

, so it is a much better cooling agent thanLead.

Zinc might therefore be a good compromise between Sodium and Lead.Like Lead, it would be safer than Sodium, has only a marginally higher

70 Ground Zero


melting point than Lead (which could be reduced with a ZnBi eutecticperhaps) and is almost as good a cooling agent as Sodium for a muchlower volume. If it was used, "depleted" Zinc consisting of natural Zincwith the Zinc 64 isotope removed would be favoured.

We mentioned earlier that Fast Breeder reactors using Plutonium aremuch smaller than so-called thermal reactors, since no moderator isrequired. Conventional Fast Breeder reactors are usually Liquid Sodiumcooled. Liquid metal cooling would therefore be expected with this typeof reactor - and liquid Zinc coolant would make the reactor even morecompact than liquid Sodium. It would probably be even more compactthan a liquid Lead cooled Fast Breeder Reactor, since the lower densitywould be more than offset by the much better thermal conductivity.

Although this is speculative, it is certainly not beyond the bounds ofpossibility that depleted Zinc has been tried as a coolant for fastreactors, especially if it was in a clandestine military or quasi-militaryreactor.

Whatever the mechanism, the evidence clearly shows that a very largequantity of Zinc fallout was produced, the concentration linked to that ofthe other radionucleides - so the source of the Zinc was at the very leastat centre of the nuclear blast if it was not a fission product. The fact thatthe Zinc concentration correlates with certain other trace elements,particularly Barium, might indicate that it was produced by fission -except there is a big difference in the girder coatings, with no Zincpresent, which may mean the reactor under the South Tower was of adifferent type. The absolute quantity of Barium and Strontium presentshows that the amount of fissile material (Uranium) that it derived fromwas far higher than would be found in any atomic bomb. Since theconcentration of Zinc present lies in a direct linear relationship to theconcentration of Barium, as well as other elements such as Lead - andthe Barium was definitely produced by fission of Uranium or Plutonium,it is difficult to see how the Zinc could not have been produced by thenuclear fission process.

There must have been hundreds of tonnes of Uranium present toproduce so much fallout. The only known source of so much Uranium isa nuclear reactor.

If the Zinc came from the reactor blast itself then it would be composedto a certain extent of the dangerous Zn 65 isotope. If it came from ZincOxide injected into the water coolant or a speculative liquid Zinc coolant,one would expect the Zinc in the dust to not contain Zn 65 and thereforenot be too dangerous. If it came from another source of Zinc - somelarge machinery containing natural Zinc that was exposed to the neutronradiation blast - then the Zinc fallout would be approximately 50%comprised of the dangerous Zn 65 isotope.

Given the high correlation of [Zn] to [Ba], the most likely explanation forthe source of the Zinc is Ternary Fission of Uranium, i.e. further fissionof the radioactive products in the intense underground nuclear blast.

Ground Zero 71

Conclusion

3.8 Conclusion

The presence of nuclear fission fallout in the WTC dust is sufficient initself to prove that the Twin Towers of the WTC were subjected to anuclear explosion.

The presence in high quantities of rare nucleides that are characteristicof nuclear fission and which should not be present in building materialat all, let alone in such high levels, and where the concentrationsstatistically and mathematically relate to each other as would beexpected from nuclear chemistry, means that no other conclusion canbe reached: the towers were brought down by the blast of a nucleardevice.

The presence of extremely high levels of Zinc is a cause for major andserious concern, as if ordinary nuclear fission was not seriousenough. The presence of such high quantities of Zinc shows that thenuclear explosion may have had the same effect as an enhancedradiation bomb, specifically designed to maximise the radiationexposure to the target population. If this Zinc was produced by thefission of the nuclear material itself or came from another source ofnatural Zinc which was then subjected to the nuclear blast, thedamaging effects will be severe. If it was originally from a source of“depleted” Zinc then the presence of so much Zinc fallout would not beso serious.

As we have said, the linear correlation of the Zinc concentration to theBarium concentration (and other fission products) does tend to indicatethat the Zinc in the dust was indeed a fission product and wouldtherefore have been composed of dangerous radioactive isotopes. Thisis certainly not a normal well known fission pathway from the normaloperation of a nuclear reactor.

We put forward the speculative possibility of a "Radon Bomb" that couldaccount for the linear correlation between the Zinc and Barium in thedust. If the Zinc was indeed a fission product, the device that produced itmust have been specifically engineered to produce it: the reactor musthave been specially set up or an even more exotic device consisting ofhundreds of tonnes of fissile material was designed. This device thenproduced mostly neutrons and enhanced radiation fallout with arelatively small blast in comparison with the mass of fissile materialpresent.

We may well be looking at the signature of a very "advanced" nucleardevice or a reactor carefully set up to produce maximum radiationdamage.

72 Ground Zero


In the Sierra Club’s report

1

is the following quote from MarianneHorinko, Acting EPA Administrator at the time of the WTC disaster in aninterview with MSNBC:

"I pray to God that in the event of another terrorist attack, God forbid, weas an agency would be equipped to get the data analysed and posted tothe public. God forbid there is a dirty bomb".

1. "Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero" Sierra Club, P181

Ground Zero 73

4 The Seismographic Evidence

4.1 Introduction

When the WTC collapsed, seismic waves were recorded by a largenumber of seismographic monitoring stations across the eastern USA.These seismograms provide very important and compelling evidence insupport of the conclusion that the Twin Towers were destroyed bynuclear explosions. We will review this evidence in detail here.

Hundreds of earthquakes are occurring continuously across the worldevery day. Most of these are small and go unremarked, except by theseismograms which record the shocks waves as they pass through theEarth.

However, the seismographic picture produced by an unnatural“earthquake” - such as the detonation of explosives in a quarry or mineor an underground nuclear explosion - is very different and distinctivecompared to that caused by a naturally produced earthquake. It is veryeasy to see the difference and indeed the underground nuclear testscarried out by India in 1998 and then by Pakistan were first detectedand brought to public attention by independent seismologists.

Seismographic data recorded by a global network of earthquakemonitoring stations is routinely used to monitor compliance with theNuclear Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The US centre for this work isat the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

What are Seismic Waves

Seismic Waves are generated in the earth by both natural earthquakesand artificial events such as routine quarry blasts. In seismographicsurveying, special devices such as hydraulic hammers or explosivecharges are used to generate seismic waves to map the undergroundstrata.Seismic Waves are divided into two categories - Body Waves andSurface Waves. Body Waves are further subdivided into P or PrimaryWaves and S or Secondary Waves and travel within the interior of theEarth.

74 Ground Zero

The Seismographic Evidence

Surface Waves are also comprised of two types - Love Waves andRayleigh Waves. These only travel along the surface of the Earth. Mostof the shaking felt from an Earthquake is caused by the Rayleigh wave.

The characteristics of the waves detected by a seismograph allow oneto determine what sort of event caused the earthquake and whether itwas natural or not.

4.2 What is the Difference between

an Earthquake and an Explosion?

There are some key differences between the seismic picture of a naturalearthquake and an underground explosion.

P Waves vs S Waves

One method of telling the difference is to look at the ratio of S waves toP waves. Explosions create strong P waves and weak S waves,whereas natural earthquakes produce relatively weak P waves andstrong S waves. However, the relative difference is much greater withexplosions than with earthquakes: the P wave in the Indian nuclear testswas 10 times as strong as the S wave (i.e. its amplitude was 10 timeshigher) while for natural earthquakes originating in the region, the Pwaves range from 3 times as strong as the S waves to 4 times as weakas the S waves.

Another key signature is that an explosion is of course an impulsiveevent - the biggest pulse of energy is produced at the beginning, whenthe explosive is detonated. Before that, there will be nothing so the firstthe seismograph knows about it is when it receives a maximumamplitude signal out of nowhere, then followed by lesser vibrations asthe reverberations produced by the explosion die away.

In contrast, with a natural earthquake, due to the different propagationspeeds of the S and P waves, the faster P wave of lower strengtharrives first, followed by the slower but stronger S waves, which createsa build-up of energy as the earthquake progresses.

TABLE 5

TYPES OF SEISMIC WAVE

TYPE

SUB-TYPE

DESCRIPTION

Body Waves

Primary Waves

Secondary Waves

Travel within the interior of the Earth. P Wave faster but weaker than S Wave.

Surface Waves

Love Waves (Lg)

Rayleigh Waves (Rg)

Travel on the surface of the Earth

Ground Zero 75

What is the Difference between an Earthquake and an Explosion?

Therefore we see the following types of pattern:

FIGURE 38 INDIAN NUCLEAR TEST vs EARTHQUAKE

1

One can very clearly see the difference between the natural earthquakeand the nuclear explosion. The artificial explosion is very distinctive,with a pulse of maximum amplitude occurring right at the beginningfollowed by a tail off as the reverberations die away. This is also whatcommon sense tells us we would see.

In a natural earthquake, we see a whole series of new shocks occurringover a period of time, as the plates in the Earth’s crust move and slideover each other. Again, we can easily understand why we see thispicture.

Distinctive Picture

Figure 38 shows us that an underground explosion produces a verydistinctive seismographic picture. We see a peak or shock at thebeginning as the explosion blasts into the ground, followed by a fallingoff as the reverberations die away.

We cannot tell from this picture if the explosive device was nuclear orconventional, but from the Magnitude of the shock we can estimate how

1. Figure 5 from http://www.llnl.gov/str/Zucca.html

76 Ground Zero


powerful the explosion was, i.e. how much TNT or TNT equivalent musthave been used.

Surface Wave Pattern

Apart from the Body Wave pattern, the Surface Wave pattern is alsodistinctive. It is well established in seismology that quarry blasts nearthe surface mainly produce high frequency Rayleigh Waves (Rg), one ofthe two types of Surface Wave, at nearby monitoring stations. Impactsources such as seismic hammers on the other hand tend to produceLow Frequency Surface Waves.

The differences between natural or non-explosive seismic sources andexplosive or impulsive seismic sources is summarised in the followingtable.

4.3 Seismographic Analysis of the

WTC Collapse

The University of Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatoryearthquake monitoring station in Palisades N.Y., 21 miles north of theWTC, recorded the seismic waves generated by the impact of theaircraft and the collapse of the Twin Towers of the WTC. In total,Lamont-Doherty operates 34 seismograph stations in the eastern USAand the seismic waves from the WTC collapse were recorded by at least13 of the stations, up to 428 km away.

The official explanation for the seismographic readings is that when theTwin Towers collapsed onto the ground, caused by the simultaneousmelting of all 47 central steel box columns by burning kerosene, thefalling rubble generated seismic waves which were then picked up bylocal seismographs.

The seismographic recording made at the Lamont-Doherty EarthObservatory in Palisades is reproduced below.

TABLE 6

Body Wave

Surface Wave

Non Impul-sive Source

P and S Waves more or less balanced

Low Frequency Waves

Impulsive Source

P Wave very strongS Wave very weak or absent

High Frequency Waves

Ground Zero 77

Seismographic Analysis of the WTC Collapse

FIGURE 39

In their report

1

, the 12 geologists from the University of Columbia makea number of interesting and revealing observations about the nature ofthe seismic footprint and the events that must have caused them.

The first interesting remark they make in the introduction is that theyfound they had recorded numerous seismic signals from the “two planeimpacts and building collapses from the two WTC towers, often at timesdifferent than those being reported elsewhere”.

Why were the times of the seismic signal recordings often different fromthose being reported “elsewhere”?

The official times of the two aircraft impacts are 08:45 to 08:46 for Flight11 (North Tower) and 09:03 for Flight 175 (South Tower).

The Palisades recorded very significant seismic spikes of M

L

0.9 and0.7 at 0.8:46 and 09:03 - 21 miles away from the WTC. This is closeenough that the seismic waves from the towers would be detected

1. “Seismic Waves Generated by Aircraft Impacts and Building Collapses at World Trade Center, New York City”, http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/LCSN/Eq/20010911_WTC/WTC_LDEO_KIM.pdf

78 Ground Zero


within seconds, so the Palisades measurements do not diverge from theofficial times of the aircraft impacts.

The same applies to the collapse of each tower. The official times are9:59 for the South Tower and 10:29 for the North Tower. The Palisadesmeasurements of the two large spikes were at 09:59:04 and 10:28:31.

However, the seismogram (Figure 39) shows 3 further impulsive shocksat 11:01:07, 11:15:04 and 11:29:46 - all as large or larger in amplitudethan the shocks detected coincident with the crashes of the aircraft. Theshock at 11:15:04 is particularly large.

These further shocks have never been mentioned or explained. Whatcaused them?

They then remark that the collapse of the North Tower was the largestseismic source, with an estimated local Richter Magnitude

1

of M

L

2.3.They then say:

“From this we infer that ground shaking of the WTC towers was not amajor contributor to the collapse or damage to surrounding buildings,but unfortunately we also conclude that from the distance at which ourdetections were made it is not possible to infer (with detail sufficient tomeet the demands of civil engineers in an emergency situation) justwhat the near-in ground motions must have been”.

They make this comment to answer certain questions that were raisedas to whether any ground shaking produced when the towers collapsedcould have weakened or caused other buildings (such as Building 7) tocollapse later. Evidently, the collapse of the WTC towers did not weakenBuilding 7.

The public explanation is that the seismic shocks were generated by theimpacts of the WTC buildings themselves with the ground. However,Lamont-Doherty make it clear that they could not tell what the near-inground motions were.

They then tell us that “Surface waves were the largest seismic wavesobserved at various stations. The presence of seismic body waves isquestionable even at Palisades...they are not observed at otherstations”.

Therefore, body waves (P and S waves) were not really detected at all.Only surface waves were detected. This is very important - bear this inmind.

The next important observation made is that ‘The predominant signalsat distances greater than 200km are short period surface waves

1. M

L

means Local Richter Magnitude - i.e. the magnitude of the seismic event at the locality where it originated.

Ground Zero 79


propagating at... the typical L

g

group velocity”. They then refer to the sixclose in seismic stations in the Metropolitan New York region: “unlike thesignals at distant stations, the predominant waves are surface waves ofshort period (about 1s) called R

g

”.

This tells us that the distant stations recorded short period or highfrequency Love Surface Waves while the close stations recorded shortperiod or high frequency Rayleigh Surface Waves.

The most important point is that all of the seismic waves detected, whichwere all surface waves, were High Frequency Waves.

As we said before, it is well known in seismology that for

explosionsnear the surface, such as quarry blasts, the dominant wavesreceived at local seismographic stations will be short periodRayleigh (R

g

) waves,

where short period means 0.2 to 5 seconds. Ashort period means a high frequency.

Therefore

the characteristics of the seismic waves from the WTCcollapse match those from quarry blasts.

The next very important point they make is that “A truck bomb at theWTC in 1993 in which approximately 0.5 tons of explosive wasdetonated was not detected seismically even at a station 16km away”.The explosive used was apparently urea nitrate, which is a relativelyweak explosive.

This truck bomb was detonated under the North Tower in the level B2car park. However, the sub-basement levels evidently acted as a bigcavity to attenuate coupling to the surrounding earth, so that nothingwas detected even at a close-in station 10 miles away.

The implication of the lack of detection of seismic waves from the 1993event is that seismic events - such as explosions or the falling of rubbleonto the surface - would not propagate well through the ground stratafrom the WTC site. When the WTC was constructed, a bathtub shapedhollow was excavated out under the entire site to house theunderground facilities. The two towers therefore sat on an undergroundcavity. This would attenuate effectively the shock of any rubble fallingonto the surface, as well as the seismic effect of a bomb in thebasement.

This is why no Body Waves that travel through the interior of the Earthwere detected from the collapse of the WTC on 9/11. However, theexplosion this time from a nuclear blast was thousands of times morepowerful than that produced by 0.5 tonnes of the relatively weakexplosive urea nitrate. Therefore, although the seismic wavesgenerated by the blast inside what is in effect an enormous cavity underthe WTC could not propagate very well into the interior of the Earth asbody waves, they would still create “ripples” on the membrane-likesurface of the Earth - producing the observed high frequency surfacewaves, with exactly the same characteristics as a quarry blast close tothe surface.

80 Ground Zero


This scenario is illustrated in the schematic below.

FIGURE 40 SEISMIC WAVE PROPAGATION AT THE WTC

A nuclear reactor situated another 50 metres below the B-6 level wouldhave better coupling to the ground than an explosive in the middle of thebasement cavity. Therefore the central supporting columns of the towerwould be well coupled to the explosive shock and conduct it up to thetop of the tower. The blast would also follow the line of least resistanceup through the relatively flimsy concrete floors of the basement levelsand into the tower and then be propagated out in ripples across thesurface of the Earth by the foundations of the tower as they were hit bythe shock wave.

B-4

B-5

B-6 PATH Tube

Parking

Refrigeration plant pipe gallery

Utility

Utility

Utility

Utility

North Tower

Vista HotelRg Surface Waves Rg Surface Waves

Nuclear Reactor Blast

Surface Waves Diffracted out across surface at Surface - Cavity Boundary

Shock waves from Underground Blast reflected back from walls of cavity: No P or S Body Waves produced

Shock Wave continues up into Tower, pulverising it

Ground Zero 81


Lamont-Doherty then go on to say that:

“An explosion at a gasoline tank farm near Newark on January 7 1983generated observable P and S waves and short period R

g

waves atPAL. Its R

g

is comparable to that for WTC collapse 2”.

So an explosion at a petroleum storage depot in the vicinity alsoproduced short period/high frequency R

g

waves, like the WTC, whichare characteristic of near surface explosions. Unlike the WTC it alsoproduced body waves, but we have already seen that an explosionunder the WTC in 1993 did not produce body waves. This we haveexplained by the underground cavity, which prevents body waves fromforming. The gasoline tank farm would not be situated on top of a cavityand hence body waves were also produced. The statement “Its R

g

iscomparable to that for WTC collapse 2” is thinly veiled code for “thetower was subjected to an explosion”.

Seismologists frequently need to produce seismic waves artificially toexplore or analyse underground strata. There are two main approachesto doing this. The first is to use an “impact source”, which uses a largemechanically driven hammer to hit the surface of the ground. Theseismic waves emitted can then be monitored and picked up by localdetectors.

The other approach is to bury small explosive charges in the ground.When they are detonated, seismic waves are generated which can beused to explore and analyse the underground geological strata.

It is well known in seismology that Impact Sources produce LowFrequency Waves while Explosive Sources produce High FrequencyWaves.

The Seismic Waves produced during the WTC collapse were HighFrequency Waves - again indicating that they could not have beenproduced by the impact of rubble on the surface, but rather by animpulsive explosive source.

82 Ground Zero


Further Commentary on The WTC Seismogram

The seismogram recorded at Lamont-Doherty is reproduced againbelow.

FIGURE 41

The seismograph recorded two very large spikes at 09:59:04 and10:28:31, immediately preceding the collapse of each tower. There wasalso a relatively large spike, of the same form, at 11:15:04, not tomention two other smaller shocks at 11:01:07 and 11:29:45.

The first two small shocks at 08:46:26 and 09:02:54 are also veryintriguing. These have a local Richter magnitude of M

L

0.9 and M

L

0.7and apparently occurred at the same time as the impact of each aircraftwith the towers. However, it would be absolutely impossible for theimpact of the aircraft near the top of each tower to generate ashockwave of that magnitude at the base.

We can immediately see that the two big shocks of M

L

2.1 and 2.3 havethe same form as that of an underground explosion, with a single verylarge impulsive spike near the beginning of the signature.

(The blast signature also tails off or is attenuated very quickly, as if thereis significant damping between the explosive source and thesurrounding ground, which there would be at the WTC).

The official explanation for this, if it is addressed at all, is that thecollapse of the buildings themselves created this impulsive shock.

Ground Zero 83


However, if this was the case, one would expect to see the magnitude ofthe shock wave rise up to a maximum as more and more buildingmaterial hit the ground and then tail off as the volume of falling materialreduced, finally tailing off to nothing.

The 110 storey towers fell at practically the rate of free fall; thereforetheir structural integrity was removed instantaneously. (This is standardprocedure in a Controlled Demolition). If one imagines standing an openended glass cylinder on a table on its end and filling it with damp sand,and then quickly pulling the cylinder up and away, the sand would falldown onto the table in an increasing avalanche, then tail away as thelast of the sand fell.

However, what was actually recorded is the classic signature of a short,sharp shock - something impacting the ground all at once with greatforce right at the beginning, with then a great reduction in the amplitudeof the seismic wave aftershock afterwards after the energy source hasbeen expended. We only see some acoustic waves before the mainspike arrives due to dispersion of the shock wave as it travels throughthe ground - the lower frequency waves generated by the shock travelfaster so they arrive before the higher frequency waves - so we seesome “spreading out” of the main impulsive shock.

Pulse Duration

Lamont Doherty also state that:

“Thus, we conclude that the pulse duration reflects mainly that thegeneration of seismic energy from the collapse was delivered over 5 -6 seconds”.

The duration of the shock generating event which produced the M

L

2.3and 2.1 spikes was estimated at 5 to 6 seconds. It was a singleimpulsive, short duration shock, similar to the earth being “hit” by a largeimpact.

We therefore have confirmation that it was not a long drawn out eventover maybe 30 seconds as we would expect, if it was the collapsingrubble itself which generated the seismic waves.

P Wave vs S Wave Profile

The geologists then go on to compare the signals with those from asmall earthquake under Manhattan on the 17th January 2001 ofcomparable M

L

. They point out that “the character of the twoseismograms is quite different. Clear P and S waves are seen only forthe earthquake”.

Figure 42 below (Figure 4 from the Lamont-Doherty report) shows this.The earthquake is at the bottom, the second WTC tower collapse at thetop. The typical earthquake pattern of the M

L

2.4 Manhattan earthquakein January 2001 shows both S and P waves, while the pattern for thesecond tower collapse is devoid of S and P waves. It is of a transversesurface wave type. In other words, it is of the type of pattern one obtainsfrom an underground explosive blast.

84 Ground Zero


FIGURE 42

They also discuss the Rayleigh waves produced by the collapse: thelargest R

g

waves detected were short period (high frequency) waves,which are characteristic of a surface or very shallow source “which is thecase for the WTC” they say. So they confirm that the source of theseismic shaking was at or just below the surface. These are also thetypes of waves predominantly produced by quarry blasts.

Another interesting comment was that the collapses and falling debrishad an effect “except for temperature, an effect very similar to

pyroclastic

ash flows that descend slopes of volcanoes”.

(In fact, we know from eyewitness accounts that the dust was indeedvery hot, sizzling in fact and that it set fire to organic material as itspread out from the collapse).

Ground Zero 85

Comparison with Nuclear Test Seismograms

4.4 Comparison with Nuclear Test

Seismograms

We will now compare the WTC seismogram more closely to knownseismograms from underground nuclear explosions.

Figure 43 is another seismogram from the Lawrence Livermore NationalLaboratory Nuclear Test Monitoring

1

department comparing the IndianNuclear Test of 11th May 1998 to a local earthquake.

FIGURE 43

According to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory:

“Figure 2. Seismogram of the Indian Nuclear Test and a representativenearby earthquake. These seismic signatures for an earthquake and anexplosion are typical and clearly distinguish one from the other”.

The signature for the Indian Nuclear Test of 11th May 1998, describedabove as “typical” for an explosion, appears to be practically identical tothe signature from each WTC collapse.

An argument that has been brought against this is to say that thetimescale of the WTC seismogram and the Indian Nuclear Testseismogram is different. It is postulated by detractors that the timescaleon the WTC seismogram has been compressed, making it appear thatan impulsive spike was produced, like the atomic bomb seismograms,when in reality the WTC collapse took place over a longer period of timethan the Indian atomic bomb seismograms and therefore the “spike” isan artefact.

1. “Seismic Monitoring Techniques put to a test”http://www.llnl.gov/str/Walter.html

86 Ground Zero


We categorically refute this with three points.

First, Lamont-Doherty tell us explicitly that the duration of the entireevent which generated the seismic energy was 5 to 6 seconds.

This would seem to be of the order of duration one would expect for anunderground nuclear blast. Explosions are not long drawn out eventstaking place over minutes like earthquakes - they happen inmicroseconds or milliseconds and with a shock wave from anunderground nuclear blast travelling out at maybe a few thousandmetres per second, a few seconds would be all it would take for thebomb to vaporise the ground to create an underground cavern or crater.

The length of time it took for the towers to collapse was also significantlylonger than 5-6 seconds; the towers took 8 seconds and 10 seconds tofall.

Secondly, both Lamont Doherty and Lawrence Livermore provide uswith a detailed and distinctive Velocity Profile analysis for theirseismograms.

FIGURE 44

The Velocity Profile on the right is called “Signals for the Indian 1974and 1998 Indian Underground Nuclear Tests recorded in northernCanada”.

On the left we see the Velocity Profile from Figure 4 of the Lamont-Doherty Report of the WTC collapse (without the earthquakecomparison in Figure 42).

The timescale of each is also similar: about 5 seconds from start tofinish for the Indian tests and 10 seconds for the WTC. This would varydepending on the magnitude of the explosion and the intervening rockstrata.

Therefore far from the WTC seismogram having been compressed, it isactually somewhat

spread out

compared to the seismogram from theIndian nuclear test.

Ground Zero 87

Comparison with Nuclear Test Seismograms

It has been argued by debunkers (at least one highly “qualified”) that thespike on the WTC seismogram was an artificial artifact created bycompressing many spikes that took place over a longer period of timeinto a shorter timescale, by using a shorter time scale on the x axis. Butas we have just seen above, the event which created the WTC spiketook place over twice as long a period as the Indian nuclear test whichalso produced a spiked seismogram. The “spike” in the WTCseismogram therefore has to be a real event, not an artefact.

Third and most damning, the whole argument that compressing thetimescale would produce a spike is risible. If the absolute magnitude ofthe shockwave was low at all times, then no amount of compressing thetimescale along the x axis is going to expand the amplitude along the yaxis. Think of folding up a concertina. Opened out, the end boards havea certain height; closed up, it is now very thin but the end boards stillhave the same height. Compressing all the leaves together does notmake them add up their height.

The WTC seismograms are in fact damning evidence in their own right.They show exactly the same pattern as an underground nuclear blast.

Discriminating Between Explosions and Earthquakes

We quote here from the Lawrence Livermore website:

“Livermore seismologist Bill Walter explains that the differences inseismic P- and S-wave energy provide one method of discriminatingexplosions from earthquakes. Seismic P waves are compressionalwaves, similar to sound waves in the air. Shear (S) waves aretransverse waves, like those that propagate along a rope when one endis shaken. Because underground explosions are spherically symmetricdisturbances, they radiate seismic P waves efficiently. In contrast,earthquakes result from sliding or rupture along a buried fault surfaceand strongly excite the transverse motions of S waves. Thus, we expectthat explosions will show strong P waves and weak S waves and thatearthquakes will show weak P waves and strong S waves, as seen inFigure 2.

This is another important indication. We can therefore say that if it hadbeen the collapse of rubble and the debris of the towers themselves thathad caused the seismic waves, that would NOT have been sphericallysymmetrical. Collapsing rubble should therefore produce mostly S typeBody Waves and low frequency Surface Waves (R

g

). Only HighFrequency R

g

Surface Waves were in fact detected.

What would we have expected from the fall of a building, assuming itcould produce enough coupling of seismic energy to producemeasurable or detectable seismic waves at a distance?

A more or less smooth increase to a maximum intensity and then tailingoff as the building fell to the ground, more rubble descended on top andthen the fall of rubble decreased and ceased.

88 Ground Zero


We would not expect to see a sharp spike as if the whole weight of thebuilding was lifted up and then deposited back onto the ground. Thoughconceivably this might arise from a controlled demolition in which thebuilding was literally repositioned with explosives before collapse. Thisis an art in which specialists in this field are skilled.

Since the towers were largely pulverised to dust and did not cast largepieces of the structure onto the ground, it is difficult to see how theycould have created significant seismic waves.

As one of the authors of the Lamont-Doherty report, Arthur Lerner-Lam,stated in an interview

1

, the energy of the building falling was notsufficient to generate appreciable seismic waves - most of the energywent into the dust and rubble itself.

Therefore another energy source - an impulsive shock energy source -must have been responsible for the generation of the M

L

2.3 and 2.1spikes observed by the earthquake monitoring stations.

4.5 Energy Balance

The energy balance between that required to produce the observedseismic waves and that available from the collapsing towers is alsorevealing.

If an object is dropped from a height so that it hits the ground, seismicwaves containing a certain amount of energy will be generated. Thesource of the energy for those seismic waves can only come from theoriginal energy of the object. That original energy is called its“gravitational potential energy” and is equal to the mass of the objectmultiplied by its height above the ground multiplied by the accelerationdue to gravity.

As the object falls, that “potential energy” is converted to kinetic energy;finally, some of that kinetic energy is converted into the energy of theseismic waves when it hits the ground.

Gravitational Potential Energy of WTC

The geologists estimated that the gravitational potential energy of eachtower was in the order of 10

11

Joules.

(The gravitational potential energy in this case is the mass of thebuilding multiplied by the acceleration due to gravity

g

(9.8 ms

-2

)multiplied by the mean height of the building - or more accurately, wewould integrate the weight of each floor multiplied by its height and

g

.)

1. See Appendix to this chapter

m

m

h

g = 9.8ms-2PE = mgh

At impact, v= 2gh and ke= 1/2.mv2 Therefore ke= mgh

Conversion of Potential Energy (PE) to Kinetic Energy (ke)

Seismic Radiation

Ground Zero 89

Energy Balance

This is in accord with other estimates, which put the mass of each towerat 160,000 to 180,000 tonnes. With a height of some 400 metres, onecan take the mean height and multiply by the mass of the tower and theacceleration due to gravity which gives a gph in the range of 3.1 to 3.5 x10

11

Joules.

Another way of looking at it is to estimate the kinetic energy of thetowers as they fell. Professor Cahill (q.v.) put this as “180,000 tonnesmoving at 120mph” which is 2.6 x 10

11

Joules.

Lamont-Doherty then estimate that the amount of energy radiated in theseismic waves was about 10

6

to 10

7

Joules. “Hence only a very smallportion of the potential energy was converted into seismic waves. Mostof the energy went into deformation of buildings and the formation ofrubble and dust”.

Conversion of Potential Energy into Seismic Energy

Conversion of “potential energy” into other forms of energy is very, veryinefficient. The term “Seismic Efficiency” or “Coupling Factor” is used todenote how much of the energy of an impact source is actuallyconverted into Radiated Seismic Energy.

In analyses of events such as underground rock falls, mine collapses,meteorite impacts etc, a Seismic Efficiency of between 10

-5

to 10

-3

isoften quoted. A mean estimate of 10

-4

is frequently used. This meansthat only 0.01% of the original gravitational potential energy or kineticenergy of a falling body is converted into the energy of seismic waveswhen it hits the surface.

However, this is for a body that makes a clean unimpeded impact withthe ground, like a seismic hammer.

In the case of the WTC, the building was pulverised into dust as it fell.The geologists tell us that much of the gravitational potential energy ofthe building was absorbed by the deformation of the buildingsthemselves and the formation of the rubble and dust. The entire weightof the building was not picked up and dropped onto the ground like asolid block. The seismic effect of a ton of dust will also be far lower thana ton of solid concrete.

Therefore the radiated seismic energy would be lower than 0.01% of thegravitational potential energy of the building because much of thatgravitational potential energy was first absorbed by the disintegration ofthe buildings as they fell.

The radiated seismic energy was in the order of 10

6

to 10

7

Joules, whilethe gph was in the order of 10

11

Joules. Multiplying the general SeismicEfficiency of 10

-4

by the gph of 10

11

gives us 10

7

Joules. But to that wehave to first take off the amount of gph used in the disintegration of thebuildings themselves.

How much energy was required to pulverise the WTC?

90 Ground Zero


Energy to Pulverise WTC

This can be approximately calculated for a concrete column bymultiplying the Tensile Strength of concrete by the length of the columnand the cross sectional area of the column. This will give the amount ofenergy required to completely tear the column apart.

The Tensile Strength of concrete varies between 1.4 and 14 MN/m

2

. Wewill use a low value of 5 MN/m

2

. The height of the towers was some 400metres. We will use half of that, to assume that only half of the concreteat the most was pulverised. As for the cross sectional area of theconcrete column we will use to represent the tower, we will use a very,very conservative value again of 10m on a side. The WTC was actually207 feet or 62.7 metres square. Its concrete supporting columns werecertainly far more than 10 metres square in total. So this analysis ispurely indicative and very conservative.

We can therefore now calculate the energy required to pulverise aconcrete column 200 metres long, with a cross sectional area of 100square metres.

Pulverisation Energy = 5 MN/m

2

x 200m x 100 m

2

This comes to 1 x 10

11

Joules.

This is of the same order of magnitude as the total initial gravitationalpotential energy of the towers themselves. Indeed, our conservativeestimates indicate that more energy was required to pulverise theconcrete than could possibly have been supplied by the entiregravitational potential energy of the towers.

Therefore, there is a significant deficit between the energy required topulverise the buildings and create the seismic waves and that availablefrom the initial potential energy of the buildings.

Seismic Efficiency

A further insight into “seismic efficiency” is presented here.

When the ship

1

“Edmund Fitzgerald” sank in Lake Superior in 1975,26,000 tonnes of iron ore fell onto the lake bed at a depth of some 500feet. The

gph

of the iron ore replacing the water on the lake bed wassome 3 x 10

10

J. At 100% seismic efficiency, the M

L

of the seismic wavesproduced would have been 3.8. No signals were detected at all.

Seismic efficiency for conversion of “potential energy” into radiatedseismic energy is in reality very small indeed.

While the generally used seismic efficiency or coupling factor is in therange of 10

-5

to 10

-3

, a “good” coupling factor for say an explosivecharge designed to maximise its seismic effect would be 10

-2

to 10

-3

.

1. http://www.seismosoc.org/publications/SRL/SRL_69/srl_69-5_eq.html

10m 10m

200m

F

F

Crack!

Ground Zero 91

Energy Balance

However, the coupling factor for explosions for instance on the surface

1

of the ground is much less, in the order of 10

-5

to 10

-6

.

This more pessimistic coupling factor for surface events would reducethe potential radiated seismic energy derived from the original

gph

of10

11

J to only 10

5

or 10

6

Joules, even before the creation of the dust andthe pyroclastic flow is taken into account. In addition, the WTC was saton top of a cavity which would reduce the coupling factor even further,below 10

-5

or 10

-6

.

Even nuclear weapons are marginal - only 0.5% of the energy of anunderground nuclear explosion at best is radiated as seismic waves andfrequently less.

Seismic Magnitude and TNT Equivalent

The seismic shocks from the WTC collapse measured M

L

2.1 to M

L

2.3on the Richter Scale against seismic background levels that areessentially Zero. How much explosive energy was required to produceground shaking of that magnitude?

The following amounts

2

of TNT are required to produce the equivalentRichter Magnitudes, assuming a good purposely high coupling factor -i.e. close contact between a buried explosive charge and thesurrounding ground.

Therefore we can say that the nuclear explosions which blasted theTwin Towers at the beginning of their collapse were probably in theorder of much more than 5 tonnes of TNT equivalent, because wealready know from the 1993 truck bomb that the WTC site had very poorcoupling between underground explosions and the surrounding strata.

1. www.seismo.com/msop/nnsop/03_source/source.html2. www.seismo.unr.edu

TABLE 7

Richter Magnitude

TNT Weight

Description

1.0 30 pounds large blast at construction site

1.5 320 pounds2.0 1 ton Large Quarry

or Mine Blast2.5 4.6 tons3.0 29 tons

92 Ground Zero


If the explosion took place in an underground cavity, reducing thecoupling factor, then much more explosive could be used but it wouldnot produce a correspondingly higher seismic signature. This techniqueis used with some underground nuclear bomb tests. The bomb isexploded in the middle of an underground chamber to reduce theseismic wave intensity and therefore conceal the true size of the bomb.

The 7 basement levels under the WTC effectively formed such a cavity,which may explain why the 1993 truck bomb produced no detectableseismic signature. In addition, what hollowed out underground facilitiesexisted further down?

We do not know what lay below level B6, the lowest official level, but theevidence indicates that at the very least there was a nuclear reactor andassociated equipment. There might have been many other undergroundfacilities as well, still there under Manhattan. Therefore the coupling ofthe nuclear explosion to the surrounding earth would not be very goodand the blast would tend to follow the path of least resistance, upthrough the cavity of the underground basement levels and up into thetower. This is why we conclude that the power of the nuclear explosionmust have been much more than 5 tonnes of TNT. This also explainswhy no body waves were detected by the seismographic stations, as in1993. Instead of a spherically symmetrical radiation of seismic wavesfrom the nuclear blast, most of the blast went up the “chimney” of thetowers. We would need a computer simulation to model what theseismic wave pattern may have actually been.

This leads us to the inference that the nuclear explosion could havebeen equivalent to tens of tonnes of TNT, without producing anenormous seismographic spike of over 3.0 on the Richter Scale. Butthat amount of explosive would account for the volcanic nature of theWTC collapse, as the buildings erupted and disintegrated into anenormous pyroclastic cloud.

In his book on 911, Webster Tarpley describe how on the day after theWTC attacks, Danish explosives expert Bengt Lund was interviewed bya Danish newspaper

1

the

Berlingske Tidende

. Lund estimated thatabout one ton of explosives would have been required to bring down thetowers.

We will see later how only 200lbs of explosive, when tightly coupled tothe concrete structure of the building, was enough to demolish theremains of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma.

However, the amount of energy at work in the WTC collapse was farmore than that required to just demolish them: it pulverised them. It wasthe world’s first Nuclear Controlled Demolition.

1. 911 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, Webster Tarpley, Progressive Press 2005

Ground Zero 93

Energy Balance

Miscellaneous Points

Spike Amplitude

The highest amplitude of seismic waves detected occurred at thebeginning of the seismic signature, arising from nowhere. Thisamplitude peak is 20 times as high as the rest of the seismic signature.

The energy in a wave is proportional to the square of the amplitude.Therefore, this peak pulse contained 400 times as much energy as theother energy pulses recorded.

Fall Characteristics

The buildings collapsed from the top down over a period of 8 to 10seconds - they were in free fall and pulverised to dust.

But for a building falling like this, if a noticeable seismic wave wasproduced, we would see the seismic wave build up to a crescendo asmore and more rubble hit the ground and then tail off over some periodof time. We would not see the strongest impact right at the beginningand then see it fall off.

The conversion efficiency of mgh - that potential energy - is veryinefficient, even if we had a controlled experiment set up in thelaboratory dropping a steel block onto the bench to then measure theacoustic energy produced. Only an infinitesimal portion of that“potential” could be expected to be converted into seismic or acousticwaves.

It is not credible that the impact of the buildings falling on the groundcould produce such enormous seismic spikes at the beginning that are400 times as energetic as the other waves recorded.

The key point is - what energy source that lasted 5 to 6 secondsproduced these two seismic pulses of local Richter magnitude M

L

2.1and 2.3?

The seismograms recorded at Lamont-Doherty have exactly the samepattern as underground nuclear blasts.

94 Ground Zero


4.6 Summary

We summarise here the key points:

1.

The timescale of the impulsive event which produced the seismic waves was of the same order as an explosion, 5 to 6 seconds.

2.

The seismogram itself is identical with that produced by an underground explosion and the timescale was similar.

3.

The Surface Waves produced were High Frequency Waves, typical of an explosion and similar to those produced by a quarry blast or seismic surveying charge, not the Low Frequency Waves associated with an impact.

4.

The source of the seismic energy was at or not far below the surface.

5.

Collapsing rubble is an impact source that would produce Low Frequency Surface Waves, not the High Frequency Waves detected that are typical of an explosion.

6.

Another explosion in the vicinity at a Newark petroleum depot did produce P and S Body Waves. But the 1993 explosion under the WTC did not produce any measurable P or S Body Waves. The collapse of the WTC on 9th September 2001 did not produce any measurable P or S Body Waves. This is consistent with the lack of P or S Body Waves in 1993 and we therefore have an explanation for why the Newark explosion did produce Body Waves but the WTC collapse explosions did not.

7.

The towers had insufficient Potential Energy to produce seismic waves of the intensity detected.

8.

The large spikes of M

L

2.3 and 2.1 are equivalent to at least 2 to 5 tonnes of TNT with good coupling and definitely much more at the WTC, maybe tens of tonnes of TNT, given the already known poor coupling of an explosion in the WTC basement cavity to the surrounding earth.

9.

5 other impulsive seismic events were measured by the observatory between 08:46 and 11:30. What was their source?

4.7 Conclusion

To conclude, the seismograms of the seismic waves produced by theWTC collapse are consistent with the hypothesis that they wereproduced by a nuclear explosion. By themselves, they show that a verylarge underground explosion took place.

The only seismic waves detected from the WTC on the 9th September2001 were High Frequency Surface Waves. These can only beproduced by an explosion.

It would not be possible to say whether that was a nuclear explosionwithout other evidence, but we can say it would have had to have had aTNT equivalence of at least 5 tonnes. Indeed, it must have been muchmore, due to the known poor coupling between explosions and theground at the WTC site. The effect of this much TNT on a concretestructure would be to pulverise it into dust and gravel. This will bediscussed in a later section.

Ground Zero 95

Appendix: Extracts from Articles and Web Sites

4.8 Appendix: Extracts from Articles

and Web Sites

Seismic Spikes

http://uscrisis.lege.net/911/

Seismographs at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty EarthObservatory in Palisades, N.Y., 21 miles north of the WTC, recordedstrange seismic activity on Sept. 11 that has still not been explained.

While the aircraft crashes caused minimal earth shaking, significantearthquakes with unusual spikes occurred at the beginning of eachcollapse.

The Palisades seismic data recorded a 2.1 magnitude earthquakeduring the 10-second collapse of the South Tower at 9:59:04 and a 2.3quake during the 8-second collapse of the North Tower at 10:28:31.

However, the Palisades seismic record shows that-as the collapsesbegan-a huge seismic "spike" marked the moment the greatest energywent into the ground. The strongest jolts were all registered at the

beginning

of the collapses, well before the falling debris struck theEarth.

These unexplained "spikes" in the seismic data lend credence to thetheory that massive explosions at the base of the towers caused thecollapses.

A "sharp spike of short duration" is how seismologist Thorne Lay ofUniversity of California at Santa Cruz told AFP an underground

nuclearexplosion

appears on a seismograph.

The two unexplained spikes are more than 20 times the amplitudeof the other seismic waves associated with the collapses andoccurred in the East-West seismic recording as the buildingsbegan to fall.

Experts cannot explain why the seismic waves peaked before thetowers actually hit the ground.

Asked about these spikes, seismologist Arthur Lerner-Lam, director ofColumbia University's Center for Hazards and Risk Research told AFP,"This is an element of current research and discussion. It is still beinginvestigated."

Lerner-Lam told AFP that a 10-fold increase in wave amplitude indicatesa 100-fold increase in energy released. These "short-period surfacewaves," reflect "the interaction between the ground and the buildingfoundation," according to a report from Columbia Earth Institute.

96 Ground Zero


(Therefore a 20 fold increase in amplitude means a 400 fold increase inthe energy released).

"The seismic effects of the collapses are comparable to the explosionsat a gasoline tank farm near Newark on Jan. 7, 1983," the PalisadesSeismology Group reported on Sept. 14, 2001.

One of the seismologists, Won-Young Kim, told AFP that the Palisadesseismographs register daily underground explosions from a quarry 20miles away.

These blasts are caused by 80,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate andcause local earthquakes between Magnitude 1 and 2. Kim said the 1993truck-bomb at the WTC did not register on the seismographs because itwas "not coupled" to the ground.

"Only a small fraction of the energy from the collapsing towers wasconverted into ground motion," Lerner-Lam said.

"The groundshaking that resulted from the collapse of the towers wasextremely small."

Last November, Lerner-Lam said: "During the collapse,

most of theenergy of the falling debris was absorbed by the towers and theneighbouring structures

, converting them into rubble and dust orcausing other damage - but not causing significant ground shaking."

Ground Zero 97

5 Residual Heat and Aerosol Information

5.1 Introduction

This chapter presents a variety of information from rescue andemergency services, eyewitnesses and scientific studies which givecomplementary information concerning what happened to the TwinTowers.

The most important piece of information in this category is the evidencethat the WTC site and building rubble remained at an extremely hightemperature for months after the collapse, with underground firescontinuing to burn and pools of molten steel discovered weeks laterunder the rubble.

This is one of the main pieces of evidence which indicates that the blastwas caused by the core meltdown of a nuclear reactor rather than anatomic bomb.

5.2 The Residual Heat of the Rubble

One of the most important pieces of evidence that the Twin Towers weresubjected to the underground nuclear explosion of not just an atomicbomb but of a nuclear reactor is the elevated temperature of the rubbleand the disaster site for months after the blast.

The following pieces of evidence are presented:

1.

The infra-red thermal imaging carried out by the JPL/NASA AVIRIS system.

2.

Eyewitness accounts of recovery work at the WTC site by a number of Health and Safety personnel from Bechtel.

3.

The report by the DELTA and Kelly Group of the University of California at Davis.

4.

Eyewitness accounts of molten steel by two construction companies involved in removing the rubble and debris from the site. A number of other accounts are now well documented on the Internet.

98 Ground Zero

Residual Heat and Aerosol Information

The AVIRIS Hot Spots

An infra-red thermal imaging survey of the WTC site was carried out byNASA at the request of the EPA on four separate days in the fortnightfollowing the collapse of the Twin Towers.

Information on what was discovered is presented in the same USGSreport

1

which presents the chemical analysis of the dust samples (seeChapter 3 of this report).

We have quoted below from the USGS report the procedure followed:

The Airborne Visible / Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS), ahyperspectral remote sensing instrument, was flown by JPL/NASAover the World Trade Centre (WTC) area on September 16, 18, 22,and 23, 2001

AVIRIS data collected on September 16, 2001, revealed a number ofthermal hot spots in the region where the WTC buildings collapsed.Analysis of the data indicated temperatures greater than 800˙F inthese hot spots (some over 1300˙F). Over 3 dozen hot spots ofvarying size and temperature were present in the core zone of theWTC. By September 23, most of these fires that were observablefrom an aircraft had been eliminated or reduced in intensity.

The AVIRIS instrument is a National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration (NASA) remote sensing instrument that measuresupwelling spectral radiance in the visible through short-wavelengthinfrared. The instrument has 224 spectral channels (bands) withwavelengths from 0.37 to 2.5 microns (micrometers).

In response to requests from the EPA through the USGS, NASA flewAVIRIS on a de Havilland Twin Otter over lower Manhattan at mid-day on September 16 and 23, 2001. For these deployments, the TwinOtter was flown at altitudes of 6,500 and 12,500 feet. The spectraldata for the maps shown here were measured at 6,500 feet and havea spatial resolution (pixel spacing) of approximately 6 feet (2 meters).

AVIRIS records the near-infrared signature of heat remotely. Theaccompanying maps are false colour images that show the coreaffected area around the World Trade Center. Initial analysis of thesedata revealed a number of thermal hot spots on September 16 in theregion where the buildings collapsed 5 days earlier. Analysis of thedata indicates temperatures greater than 800˙F. Over 3 dozen hotspots appear in the core zone. By September 23, only 4, or possibly5, hot spots are apparent, with temperatures cooler than those onSeptember 16 (Thermal Figure 1).

1. “Environmental Studies.....”http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/pub/open-file-reports/for-01-0429/index.html

Ground Zero 99

The Residual Heat of the Rubble

While the report says that 3 dozen hot spots were detected in the corezone of the WTC, the report presents the precise location of 8 of thesehot spots. These locations are listed below.

These are surface temperatures. Two of the hot spots showed a surfacetemperature of 1000K or more, i.e. over 700˙C.

If these were the surface temperatures, what was the temperaturebelow the surface? And what heat source could produce such extremetemperatures?

One of the thermal images in the USGS report is shown below inFigure 45.

FIGURE 45

This again is only a thermal image of the surface, not the interior of therubble.

TABLE 8

HOT SPOT LOCATIONS

Hot Spot N Latitude W Longitude KelvinA 40

o

42' 47.18" 74

o

00' 41.43" 1000 B 40

o

42' 47.14" 74

o

00' 43.53" 830 C 40

o

42' 42.89" 74

o

00' 48.88" 900 D 40

o

42' 41.99" 74

o

00' 46.94" 790 E 40

o

42' 40.58" 74

o

00' 50.15" 710 F 40

o

42' 38.74" 74

o

00' 46.70" 700 G 40

o

42' 39.94" 74

o

00' 45.37" 1020 H 40

o

42' 38.60" 74

o

00' 43.51" 820

100 Ground Zero


Eyewitness Account by Bechtel

The following extracts are quoted from a web page

1

written by threeSafety, Health and Emergency experts from Bechtel who at greatpersonal risk assisted in the recovery efforts at the WTC.

The three men were Stewart Burkhammer, Norman Black and JeffreyVincoli.

Their testimony provides a very important insight into theextraordinary temperatures under the rubble of the towers.

“On Sept. 12, 2001, a small group of SH&E professionals fromBechtel Group Inc., led by Stewart Burkhammer, a professionalmember of ASSE’s National Capital Chapter, arrived in New YorkCity to assist the city and state of New York in the emergencyrecovery effort after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.The sights and experiences of the days and weeks that followed aredescribed here in order to provide fellow SH&E professionals a briefaccount of the extraordinary challenges encountered at Ground Zero.”

"Three underground floors had been used as a parking garage with atotal capacity of 2,000 cars. Assuming (conservatively) the garage tobe half-full, with the cars’ fuel tanks being anywhere from near emptyto full, the explosive potential was extraordinary. With the stability ofthe debris pile unknown,

subsurface fires burning continuously,

welding and other hot work being performed on top of thedebris..........

“WTC Building 6 housed several federal agencies, primarily U.S.Customs (Photo 11). The third floor, now largely inaccessible,contained a firing range. More than 1.2 million rounds of ammunitionwere stored on this level.... The ammunition was finally located onOct. 24, 2001,

melted together

into large “bullet balls” that wereextremely dangerous to handle and dispose of properly (Photo 12).At one point, a discharge of a bullet, due to the

immense heat

in thearea, caused a shrapnel wound to the face of one worker. “

The ammunition was not located until October 24th, 43 days after thecollapse, yet the temperatures were still so high that they caused thedischarge of a bullet.

"The debris pile at Ground Zero was always

tremendously hot

.Thermal measurements taken by helicopter each day showedunderground temperatures ranging from 400ºF to more than

2,800ºF.The surface was so hot that standing too long in one spot softened(and even melted) the soles of our safety shoes. Steel toes wouldoften heat up and become intolerable.

This heat was also a concernfor the search-and-rescue dogs used at the site. Many were notoutfitted with protective booties (Photo 13). More than one suffered

1. http://www.asse.org/ps0502vincoli.pdf

Ground Zero 101


serious injuries and at least three died while working at Ground Zero.

The underground fire burned for exactly 100 days

and was finallydeclared extinguished on Dec. 19, 2001.”

The two photographs below from this web page show some of themelted bullets and the protective boots used on the feet of rescuedogs.

FIGURE 46 MELTED BULLET MASS & DOG WITH PROTECTIVE BOOTS

Therefore the underground fires burned for more than three months untilDecember 19th.

The Bechtel people say that the helicopter measurements showedunderground temperatures of more than 2800˚F. However, any thermalimaging measurements taken from a helicopter would only indicatesurface temperatures, not those deep below the ground. Therefore, thismust have been an extrapolation or estimate of the undergroundtemperatures. However, 2800˚F is extraordinarily hot; it is over 1500˚Cand higher than the melting point of steel.

This testimony raises the obvious question: what intense heat sourceunder the rubble could maintain underground temperatures of 1500˙Cfor such a long period of time?

The Pools of Molten Steel

There were several eyewitness accounts of the discovery of pools ofmolten steel under the rubble when the debris pile was reduced andtaken away.

What heat source could have melted structural steel and kept it moltenfor 6 weeks under the rubble of the Twin Towers?

The melting point of steel is approximately 1500˙C.

The most well known account is that by Peter Tully and Marc Loizeauxin the American Free Press

1

. According to both Peter Tully, President ofTully Construction and Marc Loizeaux, President of Controlled

1. See “N.Y. Air Hazards Found EPA Assurances Contradicted by UCD Scientists” on page 115.

102 Ground Zero


Demolition Inc., who was called in by Tully Construction to help removethe rubble, pools of molten steel were discovered 6 weeks after thecollapse of the towers.

In the AFP article, Tully says that he saw the pools. In a latercommunication to the Libertypost.org website, Mr. Loizeaux clarified

1

that he had not personally seen the molten steel but had been toldabout it by other contractors.

One of the most authoritative reports of the presence of molten steelthat has been quoted was made by Dr. Keith Eaton, Chief Executive ofthe Institution of Structural Engineers.

2

Based in London, the IoSE is the largest professional body dedicatedto structural engineering in the world. In 2002, Dr. Eaton and colleagueProf. David Blockley visited New York and were given a guided tourof “Ground Zero”. In the report which appeared in “The StructuralEngineer”, Dr. Eaton was quoted as saying:

“They showed us many fascinating slides, ranging from

molten metal

which was still red hot weeks after the event, to 4-inch thick steel platessheared and bent in the disaster”.

Other reports

3

have also appeared stating that steel members had beenliterally evaporated by intense heat and there are several other reportsof molten steel that are now extensively quoted on the Internet.

Therefore not only had a heat source melted 47 box columns each 4inches thick at the bottom of the towers - it had maintained the steel ina molten state for over 6 weeks and presumably could havecontinued to do so if the rubble had not been removed.

This could not have been achieved by 10,000 gallons of kerosene,much of which was expended in the initial fireball outside the towerwhen the aircraft first impacted.

Energy Balance Calculation

To illustrate this, here is a simple calculation.

The central core of the WTC consisted of 47 rectangular steel boxcolumns. These measured 36 by 90 centimetres and had a wallthickness of 10cms at the base, tapering to 6cms at the top (400 metresabove).

1. See “Letter from Mr. Mark Loizeaux to Mr. Gary Bryan of the Libertypost.org Website” on page 119.2. “New York Visit Reveals Extent of WTC Disaster”, The Structural Engineer, Vol. 80, n17, P6-7, 3rd September 2002.3. “Engineers Baffled over Collapse of 7 WTC; Steel Members have been partly Evaporated”, New York Times, 29th November 2001. (Glanz).

Ground Zero 103


There were also 236 smaller exterior steel columns which we will notconsider.

The total volume of steel in the 47 central columns is calculated to be3338.88 m

3

.

The density of steel is 7,874 kgm

-3

.

Therefore the mass of steel in the central columns is

3338.88 x 7,874 = 26,290 tonnes.

The Specific Heat Capacity of Steel is 470J/kg.K

Therefore the amount of thermal energy that would be required to raisethis amount of steel to 800˙C from room temperature to soften it so thatit might lose structural rigidity (which is extremely unlikely in any event)would be

(800 - 25)˙C x 470J/kg.˙C x 26,290,000kg = 9.6 x 10

12

J.

The amount of thermal energy available from the 10,000 gallons of JetAin the B767 is calculated as follows:

The Heat of Combustion of JetA is 42.8 MJ/kg.

Jet A has a mass of 6.75 lb/USG or 3.07kg/USG.

The Total Thermal Energy available from the fuel is therefore:

(10,000 x 3.07)kg x 42.8 MJ = 1.3 x 10

12

J

This is only 13% of the energy required to soften the steel of the centralcore columns, even assuming an impossible 100% efficiency of heattransfer from fuel to steel. In reality, the efficiency of transfer would bevery low - a few percent at best.

As another indicator, the thermal energy in the fuel could melt a total of1300 tonnes of steel if all of its thermal energy was transferred to thesteel without losses. The steel would then immediately resolidify, lackingany further heat energy to maintain it in the molten state.

This is calculated as follows:

Thermal Energy Available from Fuel = 1.3 x 10

12

J.

Specific Heat Capacity of Steel is 470J/kg.K

Melting Point of Steel = 1538˙C.

Latent Heat of Fusion of Steel = 277kJ/kg

Energy to raise 1kg of steel to meting point and then melt it is

104 Ground Zero


(470 x (1538 - 25) + 277,000) J = 988.1kJ

Mass of steel that can be raised from room temperature (25˙C) to1538˙C and then melted by 1.3 x 10

12

J is

1.3 x 10

12

J / 988.1 x 10

3

J = 1,315 tonnes.

With a realistic conversion efficiency of only a fraction of a percent, itwould be unlikely for even a few tonnes of the central steel supportcolumns to have melted.

It is obvious that the official story that the steel supports of the towerswere melted by burning jet fuel is woefully inadequate.Various internetsites have shown pictures of steel framed buildings that have notcollapsed even after being subjected to intense fire for days. Fire has noeffect whatsoever on the steel structure of buildings.

UC Davis - Broiled and Superheated Rubble

We will look at this in more detail in the next section. However, anaerosol and air quality monitoring program set up by the University ofCalifornia at Davis monitored particulate emissions from the WTC sitefor a number of weeks after the collapse. The program was run by aworld expert in atmospheric sciences, Professor Thomas Cahill.

A report on this monitoring appeared in a California newspaper

1

. Anextract from the article is as follows:

The Sept. 11 collapse of the 110-story skyscrapers crushed concrete,glass, computers, electrical wiring, carpeting, furniture and everythingelse in the building, then burned and

broiled

the compressed,pulverized mass for weeks. In the

super-heated

rubble the materialdisintegrated into extremely small particles, which were released intothe air for weeks. "It's like having a

large power plan

t at ground levelwith no stack," Cahill said.

In their press release

2

on what the study revealed, the UC Davis teamcomment:

“There was also an unusual, very fine, silicon-containing aerosol.This latter type of aerosol can be produced only by

very hightemperatures

, including v

aporisation of soil and glass

.

The boiling point of silicon dioxide (glass) is about 2500˙C. Theunderground temperature must therefore have been at least 2500˙C tovaporise glass and soil.

1. Sacramento Bee 12/2/ 02 “N.Y. Air Hazards Found EPA Assurances Contradicted by UCD Scientists “2. UCD Press Release 11/2/02

Ground Zero 105


Caustic Dust

The web site www.cooperativeresearch.org has the followingdescription of the USGS dust analysis exercise, as reported to the St.Louis Despatch newspaper.

On the 17th September 2001, US Geological Survey (USGS)scientists Gregg Swayze and Todd Hoefen went to New York toobtain samples of dust fallout from the WTC collapse. They collected35 dust samples from a variety of locations around Ground Zero. Thiswas to complement an airborne spectrographic analysis being carriedout by the AVIRIS system. Dr. Roger Clarke, the head of the AVIRISsystems, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “The ground samples...gave us up-close, specific information on specific points.” OnSeptember 19 they transmitted their data to the USGS office inDenver for analysis.

“Tests

1

revealed the dust to be extremely alkaline with a pH of 12.1 (outof 14). [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2/10/02] and that some of it was ascaustic as liquid drain cleaner. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2/10/02 (B)]“We were startled at the pH level we were finding”ˇ Swayze adds. “Weknew that the cement dust was caustic, but we were getting pH readingsof 12 and higher. It was obvious that precautions had to be taken toprotect the workers and people returning to their homes from the dust.”.Sam Vance, an environmental scientist with the EPA, sends the resultsto officials at the EPA, the New York health department and US PublicHealth Service. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2/10/02] “

What could have caused the dust to have such a high pH - i.e. be morecaustic than drain cleaner?

It is not possible to measure the pH of a dry substance. The high pHreadings the USGS obtained were actually measured by putting thedust in water first and then seeing how alkaline or acidic the solutionbecame.

On the site, this moisture would come from the hands, skin and lungs ofrescue workers - and the people of New York.

The fact that such high pH was measured means that the concrete dusteither contained or had been turned into a strongly caustic or alkalinereagent by whatever it was subjected to when the towers collapsed.

How could this happen?

Dry cement powder is comprised of 64% Calcium Oxide (CaO). Whenthis is added to water, it forms an alkaline solution of Calcium Hydroxideor Ca(OH)

2

, similar to “drain cleaner” which is Sodium Hydroxide. Inready to mix cement and concrete, the Calcium Oxide is combined with

1. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=environmen-tal_impact_of_9/11_usgs_assessment

106 Ground Zero


other oxides. When water is added, the CaO turns into Ca(OH)

2

whichthen in turn reacts with the other oxides present in the raw cement toform the inert finished mass of Calcium Silicate, Calcium AluminiumSilicate and similar substances which we call concrete.

Therefore pulverised concrete or cement dust is not in itself caustic butin fact very inert.

The only way the concrete dust could be made caustic would be for it tobe subjected to intense heat of over 800˙C.

The intense heat generated during the collapse of the WTC literallycalcined the Calcium Silicate and Calcium Aluminosilicate of theconcrete back into Calcium Oxide.

This analysis of the caustic nature of the dust by the USGS thereforeconfirms and corroborate the reports of the very high temperaturesunder the collapse site and on the surface itself.

We are told that the intense heat generated by the jet fuel fires meltedthe 47 steel box columns of the WTC and caused its total collapse.

Thermal calculations have already shown that this is impossible.

But the specific heat capacity of concrete is higher than steel. Evenmore thermal energy would be required to heat the concrete to calcineit into CaO than to melt the steel - and there was far more concrete inthe buildings than there was steel.

Energy Comparison

How much energy would be required to heat the concrete dust of theWTC sufficiently to calcine it into CaO?

Concrete will decompose into carbon dioxide and CaO at between 1400to 1600F or 760 to 870˙C.

Let us assume that only half the concrete in each building was calcined,i.e about 50,000 tonnes.

The Specific Heat Capacity of concrete is 0.8kJ/kg.K

The thermal energy required to raise that mass of concrete to 760˙Cfrom room temperature is therefore

50,000 x 1000 x 0.8 x (760-25) kJ = 2.9 x 10

10

kJ or 2.9 x 10

13

J.

How much thermal energy is available from the fuel in a Boeing 767?

The maximum Fuel Capacity of a standard B767 is 16,700 US Gallonsor 112,725 lbs (and we know the aircraft only had approximately 10,000gallons on board at impact).

Ground Zero 107


The Heat of Combustion of JetA is 42.8 MJ/kg.

The Total Thermal Energy available from the fuel is therefore:

(112,725/2.2)kg x 42.8 MJ = 2.2 x 10

12

J

Therefore even assuming that the total theoretical thermal energy of thefuel was converted into heating up the concrete of the building, with100% conversion efficiency, there would be insufficient energy availableto calcine more than a small fraction of the concrete in the WTC.

In reality, much of the fuel from at least the second aircraft impact wasexpended in a large fireball outside the building. And the officialexplanation for the collapse is that the burning fuel melted the steelcolumns of each tower, which would not leave any energy left to renderthe concrete dust caustic.

According to the official FEMA report, the 767s carried much less than afull load of fuel, estimated in fact at 10,000 USG.

This amount of fuel could only raise 2,233 tonnes of concrete to 760˙Cfrom room temperature, even with a completely unrealistic 100%conversion efficiency.

Other Caustic Sources

There is another source of caustic agents that would have raised the pHof the dust: the radioactive oxides of Calcium, Barium, Strontium andZinc produced by the nuclear fission and decay. These oxides all forman alkaline solution on contact with water. We have seen that the jet fuelcould not possibly have calcined enough concrete to turn the dustcaustic. The shock wave itself from the nuclear blast would not calcinethe concrete either, but there were eyewitness accounts of thepyroclastic dust “sizzling” as it passed, so evidently it was at a hightemperature - whether it was hot enough to have calcined the concretewe do not know.

However, even if we say that the intense volcanic heat was localised tothe sub-basement levels under the tower, coming from the molten coresof the reactors, and that this heat had no effect on the majority of thedust from the disintegrating towers, the radioactive fallout itself in thedust would be caustic.

Therefore the caustic nature of the dust could be yet another indicationthat the towers were subjected to a nuclear explosion. We can certainlysay we would expect to find caustic dust, caused by the presence ofalkali forming oxides of the common nuclear fission products - Barium,Strontium, Zinc and also Calcium.

Conclusion

There is overwhelming evidence that extraordinarily high temperatureswere produced during the collapse of the WTC and that they persisted

108 Ground Zero


for weeks if not months after the collapse. If the towers had beendemolished by an atomic bomb, the residual heat left would have beenmarginal. All of the fissile material in the bomb would be converted toexplosive energy.

The thermal energy available from the fuel on board each aircraft isminuscule in comparison with that required to melt the steel columnsand raise the temperature of the rubble to the temperatures of 1000Krecorded by the AVIRIS infra-red system at the surface, let alone theunderground temperatures that were vapourising glass.

The only explanation that can bring together both the evidence ofnuclear fission and the volcanic temperatures on the site is that ofthe core meltdown of a nuclear reactor.

5.3 University of California at Davis

Aerosol Analysis

The UC Davis DELTA Group (Detection and Evaluation of Long-rangeTransport of Aerosols) is a collaborative association of aerosol scientistsat several universities and national laboratories in the United States.The DELTA Group has measured aerosols’ emissions from the 1991Gulf War oil fires, volcanic eruptions, global dust storms, and the Asiansmogs.

The head of the DELTA Group is Professor Thomas Cahill, who due tohis background in nuclear physics is an international expert inatmospheric sciences and the properties of aerosols.

From October 2nd 2001 till mid December 2001, a volunteer researchteam from the DELTA Group monitored the levels of atmosphericparticles and aerosols in the atmosphere of New York, following thecollapse of the WTC.

An automated particle collection system was set up on the roof of 201Varick St., one mile north-northeast of the WTC site.

On February 11th 2002, Prof. Cahill gave a press conference todescribe some of his findings. He made the following comments, quotedhere from the UC Davis press release

1

:

"The air from Ground Zero was laden with extremely high amounts of

very small particles

, probably associated with

high temperature

s inthe underground debris pile. Normally, in New York City and in most ofthe world, situations like this just don't exist."

"Even on the worst air days in Beijing, downwind from coal-firedpower plants, or in the Kuwaiti oil fires, we did not see these levels of

1. Reference here

Ground Zero 109

University of California at Davis Aerosol Analysis

very fine particulates". The amounts of

very fine particles

,particularly very fine silicon, decreased sharply during the month ofOctober.

"The UC Davis DELTA Group's ability to measure and analyseparticle size, composition and time continuously, day and night, isunequalled".

There were numerous events when bursts of wind lasting six to eighthours carried unprecedented amounts of very fine particles to thesampling site.

In the largest spike, the DELTA Group analysis found 58 microgramsper cubic meter of very fine particles in one 45-minute period -- "anextremely high peak," Cahill said.

Metals

Many different metals were found in the samples of very fineparticles, and some were found at the

highest levels ever recordedin air in the United States

.

However, there are few established safety guidelines for airbornemetals. One metal for which there is a guideline, lead, was present atlow levels in fine and very fine particles.

Some of the metals for which there are no guidelines that werepresent in very fine particles in relatively high concentrations wereiron, titanium (some associated with powdered concrete), vanadiumand nickel (often associated with fuel-oil combustion), copper andzinc. Mercury was seen occasionally in fine particles but at lowconcentrations. Many of those metals are widely used in buildingconstruction, wiring and plumbing. Some are common in computers.

The metal content of the coarse particles is still being analysed.

What were these small very fine particles that Cahill was making such apoint about? How could a metal aerosol be produced? Very hightemperatures would be required indeed.

Very small particles are particularly dangerous since they can bypassthe body’s natural defence mechanisms and if breathed in, enterdirectly into the bloodstream. They can also pass through HEPAfilters, the finest grade of gas mask available and they can even enterthe body through the skin. So they are a serious hazard.

Anything with a diameter of less than 2.5

µ

m is considered to bedangerous for these reasons. (A micrometer or

µ

m is a millionth of ameter - or a thousandth of a millimetre).

The UC Davis press release further states:

110 Ground Zero


“There are no established safe limits for inhaled very fine particles.The closest reference is the U.S. EPA "PM2.5" standard, which limitsthe allowable mass of airborne particles in the size range 2.5micrometers to 0 micrometers. That standard is based on healthstudies of typical air samples, in which very fine particles are a smallfraction of the total mass.

In contrast, in the World Trade Center samples analysed at UC Davis,the

very fine particles

are a

large fraction

of the total mass.”

So we can understand that Prof. Cahill would want to draw attentionto the fine particulates for health and safety reasons. But is thereanything more to it?

Thomas Cahill also explained the meaning of the generation of theparticles to reporters more clearly.

“The presence of coarse particles immediately after days of rainindicated that they were being continually re-generated from a dry, hotsource, not re-suspended from roadways and other surfaces.

“The very fine particles were high in a number of species generallyassociated with combustion of fuel oil - such as sulfur, vanadium, andnickel, and incineration of plastics and other organic matter.

“There was also an unusual, very fine, silicon-containing aerosol.This latter type of aerosol can be produced only by

very hightemperatures

, including v

aporisation of soil and glass

.

“We had seen this previously, but at much lower concentrations, inthe plumes of coal-fired power plants in the EPA BRAVO study inTexas, the burning oil fields of Kuwait, and Beijing during the wintercoal heating season.

“In the case of metals, we saw many different species in the very fineparticles. Most, including lead and mercury, were at low concentrationsat our site, but some, such as

vanadium

, were the

highest that wehave seen recorded

”.

This is very important. Cahill was saying that the ground under GroundZero was so hot that the soil itself was vaporised. Glass was not justbeing melted, but boiled away - and this was still happening weeks later.Even after rain had dampened down the site, these aerosols were beingregenerated by the intense underground heat source.

The presence of Vanadium is very interesting. Cahill’s comment aboutVanadium and Nickel being associated with the combustion of fuel oil,plastics or organic matter is completely incorrect and draws attention tothis incongruity. Where would this Vanadium have come from - thehighest concentrations they had ever seen? Vanadium is not a commonelement and certainly not a common component of skyscrapers.

Ground Zero 111

University of California at Davis Aerosol Analysis

However, as we have already seen in Chapter 3, Vanadium is a decayproduct of radioactive fallout. It is associated with Nickel and Chromiumin its decay series.

The graph below from Cahill’s report shows that on the 3rd October, ahigh spike of Vanadium was detected, of roughly 110 ng/m

3

. On the nextday, another Vanadium spike was detected, 60 ng/m

3

. On the 26thOctober there was a massive spike in the concentration of Chromiumwhich goes off the scale (over 150 ng/m

3

) and to a lesser extentNickel.

FIGURE 47

112 Ground Zero


V, Cr and Ni are radioactive decay products from the same decaypathway.

It is interesting that on the 3rd and 4th October, the spikes in Vanadiumconcentration are accompanied by Silicon spikes, but on the 26th theenormous Chromium/ Nickel spike is not matched by the Silicon orSulphur.

Whatever happened on the 26th October must have been a major eventof some kind, to create this enormous Chromium emission without thenormal building materials present.

We can speculate that on the 26th October 2001, perhaps the reactorcore was exposed allowing high amounts of chromium and nickel intothe atmosphere.

Stainless Steel

These spikes recorded by Cahill of chromium, nickel and to a lesserextent vanadium are also interesting from another point of view.

Surrounding the fissile core of a nuclear reactor is an enormous amountof stainless steel. The reactor pressure vessel itself is normally made ofstainless steel 6 inches thick. All of the cooling pipes, heat exchangersand condensers carrying coolant water are made of stainless steel.The enormous steam turbines attached to the electricity generatorsare made of stainless steel.

As an example, the Indian Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR)contains about 3300 tonnes of stainless steel in its core material andaccessories, not including the steam turbines.

The main element alloyed with steel to create stainless steel ischromium. Normally, between 9% and 12% of SS is chromium. Othermajor alloying elements include nickel, vanadium, molybdenum and forspecialist nuclear applications, titanium and zirconium. In fact, thesingle biggest industrial use of nickel is in the manufacture of stainlesssteel.

Given the extremely high temperatures that we know existed belowthe rubble, high enough to continually vaporise soil and glass, andthe existence of molten pools of steel, it can be hypothesised that theenormous chromium and nickel spike on the 26th October may havebeen caused by the vaporisation of a pool of stainless steel,exposed by recovery operations on that day. If the temperature reachedover 700˙C at the surface, it would have been substantially higherbelow. We know that the underground temperatures were high enoughto vaporise glass. The boiling point of Silicon Dioxide is 2230˙C, whichwould be achievable underground if the surface temperatures were700˙C. The boiling point of steel is about 2800˙C, which is about thesame as the melting point of uranium or the temperature expected in thecore melt of a nuclear reactor meltdown. Even if the molten steel wasnot boiling, it would still vaporise at the temperatures we know existed of

Ground Zero 113


over 2000˙C. The evidence that glass was being vaporised stronglysupports the possibility that stainless steel, if it was present, was beingvaporised.

The presence of these chromium and nickel spikes is consistent with thepresence of a reservoir of molten or even boiling stainless steel.Stainless steel is not used as a construction material, certainly not asstructural steel beams for a skyscraper. However, as we have said,thousands of tonnes of stainless steel are used in the core material of anuclear reactor: a nuclear reactor is probably one of the few engineeringapplications where one will find so much stainless steel in one place.

To summarise, we know that a nuclear explosion occurred. Theenormous residual and continuing heat is better explained by the coremeltdown of a nuclear reactor, which reaches 2800˙C or more. If therewas a nuclear reactor present, one would expect to see evidence of a lotof stainless steel - at least hundreds of tonnes even for a small reactor.The detection of large quantities of chromium and nickel and to a lesserextent vanadium is consistent with the hypothesis that a large quantityof vaporised stainless steel was present and therefore is consistent withthe deduction that the nuclear event was a core meltdown.

Diphenyl

An interesting observation is made in the New Scientist article belowthat of the 400 organic compounds detected after the collapse, manyhad never been detected in the air before.

One of these rare never before seen compounds detected by theEPA was diphenyl propane.

Where did the diphenyl come from?

Mixtures of diphenyl and diphenyl oxide have been used as thecoolant for certain nuclear reactors - organic solvent cooled reactors.Diphenyl apparently never became as popular as water as a reactorcoolant mainly due to the sensitivity of these solvents to radiation.

If diphenyl is so rare, that the EPA have never seen it as an air pollutantbefore, its presence

may

provide evidence that a diphenyl coolednuclear reactor was under the towers.


and Web Sites

This section presents some relevant articles with commentary on theaftermath of the WTC collapse.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/print.jsp?id=ns99994160

Health fears over Twin Towers' plume 18:34 11 September 03

114 Ground Zero


NewScientist.com news service

Two years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in NewYork City, which claimed almost 3000 lives, researchers havegathered to assess the legacy of the giant plume of smoke and dustcaused by the atrocity.

The composition of the plume was unique in its chemical compositionand unprecedented in its complexity. As a result, no one yet knowsthe health effects of breathing them in and therefore how many morepeople may have been affected by the collapse of the Twin Towers.

“This was a fully functional building that was completely smulchedinto a

burning pit

," says Thomas Cahill, an atmospheric physicist atthe University of California Davis, who has focused on thecomposition of the finest particles in the plume for the past two years.

"That's never happened before, so we are in completely newterritory. All we can say is we are worried about it," he says. "It may takeyears before these effects show up

, just like with radiation

."

Astonishing complexity

The gathering on Wednesday at the American Chemical Society'smeeting in New York City was the first time chemists, atmosphericphysicists and doctors from over 20 US institutions had got togetherto pool their results.

Paul Lioy, of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey,emphasised to the meeting the sheer diversity of chemicals that werepresent in the dust. A mixture of plastics, computer hardware,synthetic furniture and hundreds of miles of wire burned to produce anaerosol of astonishing complexity. Out of 400 organic alkanes,pthalates and polyaromatic hydrocarbons he identified,

the majorityhad never before been detected

in the air, he says.

One such compound, detected by researchers from the USEnvironmental Protection Agency, was diphenyl propane, thought tohave come from burning plastic. The health consequences ofbreathing it are totally unknown, says EPA scientist LeonardStockburger.

Scientists from the US Geological Survey showed that even amongthe well-known molecules and crystals, new shapes of particle werethrown up by the plume. "They detected fibrous,

cylindricalmaterials,

which have a totally different behaviour to sphericalparticles," says Michael Hays of the EPA, who attended the meeting."How does that influence inhalation routes?"

But the scientists were careful to be clear about their message. "Wedon't want people to get the wrong impression. For long term effects,we are simply in an area of unknowns," says Lioy.

Ground Zero 115


Next, the chemists' hope to produce a map of exactly what was in theair and when in the weeks and months after the September 11attacks. Then, if people develop symptoms, the doctors will knowexactly what they were likely to have inhaled.

The New York City Department of Health launched a survey lastFriday that will follow the health of up to

200,000 people

who were inthe vicinity of the Twin Towers when they collapsed.

Some evidence of ongoing effects has already surfaced. A studypublished in August showed that pregnant women who were nearGround Zero on September 11 or up to three weeks later were

twiceas likely to give birth to smaller babies

as women who were not.

Note: reduced birth weight of neonates is a well known symptom ofexposure to radiation.

N.Y. Air Hazards Found EPA Assurances Contradicted by UCD Scientists

1

Cahill, 65, is a professor emeritus of physics and atmosphericsciences. He has used his background in

nuclear physic

s to pioneermethods and tools for analyzing aerosols -- tiny particles suspendedin the air -- and has led more than 40 studies on pollution around theworld, including several in national parks and in the basins of LakeTahoe and Mono Lake.

The Ground Zero monitoring showed the fallout had subsided by lateDecember, when Cahill's team stopped sampling. He said rainprobably has cleared the air outside, but he is concerned about NewYorkers returning to contaminated buildings.

"These-size particles travel like a gas. They penetrate windows,doors, everywhere," he said. "You don't feel it, and you can't seeit."

Cahill is whistleblowing here, with his comment that these gas-likeaerosol particles “penetrate windows and doors” and that you cannotsee it or feel it. Is this not an exact description of radiation? In fact, a gascould not pass through glass windows or through the structure of adoor - the only thing that can penetrate in that way is radiation.

Cahill is hinting as strongly as he dare that the fallout is radioactive, topeople who can decipher what he means. In the New Scientist article,he has also commented that the effects will be long term, “just likeradiation”.

There are some other revealing extracts in this article:

1. Sacramento Bee, 12/2/02, Eddie Lau and Charles Bowman

116 Ground Zero


The Sept. 11 collapse of the 110-story skyscrapers crushed concrete,glass, computers, electrical wiring, carpeting, furniture and everythingelse in the building, then burned and

broiled

the compressed,pulverized mass for weeks. In the

super-heated

rubble the materialdisintegrated into extremely small particles, which were released intothe air for weeks. "It's like having a

large power plant at ground levelwith no stack

," Cahill said.

Indeed, there was a large powerplant at ground level - an exposednuclear reactor that had undergone core meltdown.

By his (Cahill’s) assessment, the

superheated

core of the building,buried under a giant pile of rubble with little to no oxygen, created a

pressure cooker

that

broiled

the concrete, glass, computers andeverything else into infinitesimally small particles that were exuded ina gassy, lingering haze.

The article goes on to quote Bruce Case, Former Head of the EPA’sCentre for Environmental Epidemiology:

"This was a unique event in may ways and one of those ways was thetypes of

human exposures

produced.”.

The emphasis on asbestos turned out to be misplaced.

Case predicted that the health fallout from the World Trade Centerattack will continue indefinitely. "Regrettably," he said, "what we havehere is

a human experiment on a grand scale

."

Bruce Case is absolutely correct.

The experiment is to determine what are the long terms effects on thehuman population when an enhanced radiation nuclear device isdetonated in a major modern metropolis and the population carries onits activities as normal.

An interesting exercise in applied experimental biology, following in along line of non-consensual clandestine nuclear experiments oncivilians and the military that the US and UK have conducted since the1940s.

New Seismic Data Refutes Official WTC Explanation

By Christopher Bollyn

Exclusive to American Free Press 9-5-2

http://uscrisis.lege.net/911/

Peter Tully, president of Tully Construction of Flushing, N.Y., told AFPthat he saw pools of

"literally molten steel

" at the World Trade Center.

Ground Zero 117


Tully was contracted after the Sept. 11 tragedy to remove the debrisfrom the site.

Tully called Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, Inc.(CDI) of Phoenix, Md., for consultation about removing the debris.CDI calls itself "the innovator and global leader in the controlleddemolition and implosion of structures."

Loizeaux, who cleaned up the bombed Alfred P. Murrah FederalBuilding in Oklahoma City, arrived at the WTC site two days later andwrote the clean-up plan for the entire operation.

AFP asked Loizeaux about the report of molten steel on the site.

"Yes," he said, "

hot spots of molten steel in the basement

s."

These incredibly hot areas were found "at the bottoms of the elevatorshafts of the main towers, down seven [basement] levels," Loizeauxsaid.

The molten steel was found "

three, four, and five weeks late

r, whenthe rubble was being removed," Loizeaux said. He said

molten stee

l

was also found at 7 WTC

, which collapsed mysteriously in the lateafternoon.

Construction steel has an extremely high melting point of about 2,800degrees Fahrenheit.

Asked what could have caused such extreme heat, Tully said, "Thinkof the jet fuel."

Loizeaux told AFP that the steel-melting fires were fuelled by "paper,carpet and other combustibles packed down the elevator shafts bythe tower floors as they 'pancaked' into the basement."

However, some independent investigators dispute this claim, sayingkerosene-based jet fuel, paper, or the other combustibles normallyfound in the towers, cannot generate the heat required to melt steel,especially in an oxygen-poor environment like a deep basement.

Eric Hufschmid, author of a book about the WTC collapse, PainfulQuestions, told AFP that due to the lack of oxygen, paper and othercombustibles packed down at the bottom of elevator shafts wouldprobably be "a smoky smouldering pile."

Experts disagree that jet-fuel or paper could generate such heat.

This is impossible, they say, because the maximum temperature thatcan be reached by hydrocarbons like jet-fuel burning in air is 1,520degrees F. Because the WTC fires were fuel rich, as evidenced bythe thick black smoke, it is argued that they did not reach this upperlimit.

118 Ground Zero


The hottest spots at the surface of the rubble, where abundantoxygen was available, were much cooler than the molten steel foundin the basements.

Five days after the collapse, on Sept. 16, the National Aeronauticsand Space Administration (NASA) used an Airborne Visible/InfraredImaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) to locate and measure the site's hotspots.

Dozens of hot spots were mapped, the hottest being in the eastcorner of the South Tower where a temperature of 1,377 degrees Fwas recorded.

This is, however, less than half as hot at the molten steel in thebasement.

The foundations of the twin towers were 70 feet deep. At that level,47 huge box columns, connected to the bedrock, supported the entiregravity load of the structures. The steel walls of these lower boxcolumns were four inches thick.

Videos of the North Tower collapse show its communication mastfalling first, indicating that the central support columns must have failedat the very beginning of the collapse. Loizeaux told AFP, "Everythingwent simultaneously."

"At 10:29 the entire top section of the North Tower had been severedfrom the base and began falling down," Hufschmid writes. "If the firstevent was the falling of a floor, how did that progress to the severingof hundreds of columns?"

Asked if the vertical support columns gave way before theconnections between the floors and the columns, Ron Hamburger, astructural engineer with the FEMA assessment team said, "That's the$64,000 question."

Loizeaux said,

"If I were to bring the towers down, I would putexplosives in the basement to get the weight of the building to helpcollapse the structure."

Ground Zero 119


Letter from Mr. Mark Loizeaux to Mr. Gary Bryan of the Libertypost.org Website

Mr. Bryan:

I didn't personally see molten steel at the World Trade Center site. Itwas reported to me by contractors we had been working with

. Moltensteel

was encountered primarily during excavation of debris around theSouth Tower when large hydraulic excavators were digging trenches 2to 4 meters deep into the compacted/burning debris pile. There are bothvideo tape and still photos of the molten steel being "dipped" out by thebuckets of excavators. I'm not sure where you can get a copy.

Sorry I cannot provide personal confirmation.

Regards,

Mark Loizeaux, PresidentCONTROLLED DEMOLITION, INC.

New York Visit Reveals Extent of WTC Disaster

The Structural Engineer, Vol. 80, No. 17, P6-7, 3rd September 2002.

The Ground Zero site where the World Trade Center towers once stoodwas the focus of the visit by Prof. David Blockley and Dr. Keith Eaton toNew York, on the first leg of their North American tour. They discusseddevelopments on the site with Pablo Lopez and Andrew Pontecorvo ofMueser Rutledge.

Dr. Eaton said: ‘We were given a fascinating insight into what had beenhappening at the site. Our hosts, under the firm’s principal engineerGeorge Tamaro (F), had been constantly involved at Ground Zero forseveral months. They had been called in as foundation engineers withina week of 11 September, and had spent several months examining thestability of the debris and the diaphragm wall all around the site,commonly known as the “bathtub” They had been key individuals inadvising on the excavation of the site, with a great deal of care beingneeded before debris could be removed in order to maintain the stabilityof the original slurry walls.

‘They showed us many fascinating slides’ he continued, ‘ranging frommolten metal which was still red hot weeks after the event, to 4-inchthick steel plates sheared and bent in the disaster’.

120 Ground Zero


How Strong Is The Evidence For A Controlled Demolition?

http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/collapse%20update/#stills

“What is especially striking in the collapse of both towers is theenormous volume of material being ejected early in the collapse, andthe quantity of shattered steel thrown out ahead of the dust clouds.Much of this broken steel consists of neatly chopped one-story longpieces of the perimeter columns, 14" square steel box columns thatare assembled in three-story sections. These columns are alsowelded to 52" deep plates along each floor, but have somehow beenbroken free of these at the same time they are chopped up andejected at high speed.”

http://www.skfriends.com/images/biggart/07-wtc-Biggart1765.jpg

FIGURE 48

“The above is one of an amazing series of pictures taken by BillBiggert, a photographer who was killed by the dust cloud from theWTC-1 collapse. It shows large numbers of 12' sections of perimetercolumns flying out ahead of the dust cloud in what is very clearly anexplosive event. He got very close to the North Tower just before itfell, and captured some amazing pictures of its collapse and of theprevious damage from the WTC-2 collapse. What is clear especiallyin Biggert's pictures is that the building is turning to dust as or evenbefore it falls, as for example here. Because so much very finepowder is produced very quickly and mixed with air, it becomes apyroclastic cloud, capable of very rapid and destructive flow afterfalling from its original height. This earlier article of mine (alsoreferenced below) discusses the issue of pyroclastic flow as it applies tothe WTC.”

Ground Zero 121

6 The Blast Signature

6.1 Introduction

In this chapter, we compare photographs and the physicalcharacteristics of the collapse of the WTC with photographs and theknown physical characteristics of underground nuclear explosions.

We will see that they are very similar and that the pulverisation of thetowers into fine dust and gravel is consistent with the effects of anunderground nuclear explosion in the basement of the buildings.

This photograph (Figure 49) shows the very violent explosive nature ofthe WTC demolition. The building does not simply topple and collapse -it is torn to smithereens in a fountain of debris. Clearly, a very largesource of energy is at work.

FIGURE 49 INITIAL BURST

122 Ground Zero

The Blast Signature

This picture is of the famous Sedan underground nuclear test next toanother photograph of the WTC.

FIGURE 50 SEDAN TEST

The Sedan Test shows the

main cloud

rising into the air while the

basesurge

starts to roll across the ground. Material is ejected at high velocityin all directions.

We see the same pattern of high velocity ejecta jets firing verticallyupwards in Figure 51 below, with the main cloud starting to rise above.

FIGURE 51 VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF THE WTC

Ground Zero 123

Introduction

One of the clearest photographs of all is the following.

FIGURE 52 VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF THE WTC II

This shows even more clearly the enormous explosion of energydirected vertically upwards into the air directly above the tower. Thetower certainly does not just collapse from the bottom up, as the “meltedcolumns” theory pretends. It does not even simply blow down from topto bottom from demolition charges. It does even more than that. It eruptsvertically upwards like a volcano. There is only one explanation for whatcan be clearly seen in Figure 52. The immense pressure of anenormous explosive force that pulverised the tower and propelled itupwards like a volcano blowing its top.

This upward volcanic ejection combined with a downward pulverisationis consistent with an underground blast pressure wave travelling up thetower, hurling the top of the tower vertically upwards when it reaches thetop and then pulverising the tower to dust as it is reflected and travelsback down.

124 Ground Zero

The Blast Signature

6.2 The Nuclear Blast Sequence

The following

1

sequence of pictures is very revealing. It shows both thecharacteristic effect of the initial underground nuclear blast and then thehot plume rising upwards after the blast, again typical of anunderground nuclear blast.

FIGURE 53 NUCLEAR DEMOLITION SEQUENCE

In the first photograph, we see the

Initial Burst

of the nuclear explosionand then in the second photograph (Top Right) the

Main Cloud

starts torise from WTC Nuclear Demolition. In the third shot (Bottom Left) wesee the Main Cloud or

Plume

continuing to rise up into the atmospherewhere it is caught by the horizontal wind. In the final photograph (BottomRight) we see the pyroclastic

Base Surge

spreading out to left and rightacross the ground.

1. http://www.justiceforwoody.org/re911/materials/flyer/site1103_s2.jpg

Ground Zero 125

The Nuclear Blast Sequence

Compare the WTC plume to the plume from a shallow undergroundnuclear burst.

A powerful source of heat can be seen at work in the WTC event,continuing to force dust up into the air in a pillar of rising smoke.

FIGURE 54 WTC PLUME vs NUCLEAR PLUME

Conclusion

It is plain to see from the most cursory inspection of the photographs ofthe WTC, that the collapse started with an extremely violent and highenergy eruption of material from the building.

Figure 51 in particular shows that this ejection of material is comparableto a volcanic eruption.

The pyroclastic flow of dust after the collapse is also typical of certainvolcanic eruptions.

The building did not simply collapse and implode as occurs during acontrolled demolition. It certainly did not collapse as one would expect ifthe central supporting columns had simply buckled and given way.

The building in fact exploded violently and ejected pulverised concreteand rubble in all directions, followed by pyroclastic flow of hot dustfollowing the same pattern as the base surge of an underground nuclearexplosion.

Clearly, the energy source responsible for this was enormous and fargreater than that required to carry out a conventional controlleddemolition by implosion.

126 Ground Zero

The Blast Signature

6.3 The Effects of an Underground

Nuclear Explosion

The following descriptions of the effects of an underground nuclear blastis reproduced from an on-line book

1

called “The Effects of NuclearWeapons”, written by the US Dept. of Defense and the EnergyResearch and Development Administration in 1977. It is perhaps one ofthe best sources of information available on nuclear weapons.Particularly important points have been highlighted.

2.91 When a nuclear weapon is exploded under the ground, a sphere ofextremely hot, high-pressure gases, including vaporized weaponresidues and rock, is formed. This is the equivalent of the fireball in anair or surface burst. The rapid expansion of the gas bubble initiates a

ground shock wave

which travels in all directions away from the burstpoint. When the upwardly directed shock (compression) wave reachesthe earth's surface, it is reflected back as a rarefaction (or tension)wave. If the tension exceeds the tensile strength of the surface material,the upper layers of the

ground will spall

, i.e., split off into more-or-lesshorizontal layers. Then, as a result of the momentum imparted by theincident shock wave, these layers move upward at a speed which maybe about

150 (or more) feet per second

.

2.92 When it is reflected back from the surface, the rarefaction wavetravels into the ground toward the expanding gas sphere (or

cavity

)produced by the explosion. If the detonation is not at too great a depth,this wave may reach the top of the cavity while it is still growing. Theresistance of the ground to the upward growth of the cavity is thusdecreased and the cavity expands rapidly in the upward direction. Theexpanding gases and vapours can thus supply additional energy to thespalled layers, so that their upward motion is sustained for a time oreven increased.

This effect is referred to as

"gas acceleration."

BASE SURGE AND MAIN CLOUD

2.96 When the fallback from a shallow underground detonationdescends to the ground, it entrains air and fine dust particles which arecarried downward. The dust-laden air upon reaching the ground movesoutward as a result of its momentum and density, thereby producing a

base surge

, similar to that observed in shallow underwater explosions.The base surge of dirt particles moves outward from the centre of theexplosion and is subsequently carried downwind. Eventually theparticles settle out and produce

radioactive contamination over alarge area

, the extent of which depends upon the depth of burst, thenature of the soil, and the atmospheric conditions, as well as upon theenergy yield of the explosion. A dry sandy terrain would be particularlyconducive to base surge formation in an underground burst.

1. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/nukeffct/enw77b2.htm

Ground Zero 127

The Effects of an Underground Nuclear Explosion

2.97 Throwout crater formation is apparently always accompanied by abase surge. If gas acceleration occurs, however, a cloud consisting ofparticles of various sizes and the hot gases escaping from the explosioncavity generally also forms and rises to a

height of thousands of feet

.This is usually referred to as the "main cloud," to distinguish it from thebase surge cloud. The latter surrounds the base of the main cloud andspreads out initially to a greater distance. The main cloud and basesurge formed in the SEDAN test (100 kilotons yield, depth of burial 635feet in alluvium containing 7 percent of water) are shown in thephotograph in Fig. 2.97, taken six minutes after the explosion.

There are some important points to note here.

First, when the compressive shock wave reaches the surface, it isreflected back. If the tensile forces exceed the tensile strength of theground, it will spall - i.e. peel off in horizontal layers and in fact bepulverised, literally torn apart.

The Twin Towers can be considered to be essentially a finger of rockextending up into the air, integrally bound into the earth at the base bythe concrete foundations. The shock waves generated by the nuclearblast would travel up the steel and concrete structure in much the sameway as through the earth itself, with the effects of the blast seen at thetop of the rock pillar or skyscraper instead of on a wide expanse ofground as in a normal nuclear test - for the simple reason that the bombwas exploded below the skyscraper.

We would therefore expect to see the reflected shock wave spall layersfrom the building or “artificial rock pillar” from the top as it travels backdown to the bottom.

This is indeed exactly what was witnessed. The building vaporised fromthe top down at high speed. At 150 feet per second for the shock wave,this would take about 9 seconds to travel from top to bottom of the 1360feet high towers. The towers fell in 8 seconds and 10 secondsrespectively. Therefore, the speed of the collapse is in the right order ofmagnitude that would be expected if it was generated by an intensesubterranean shock wave.

Secondly, a cavity is formed by the underground nuclear blast. We knowthat the WTC rubble fell into an enormous pit. The original spaceexcavated for the foundations was of course filled in to a degree withconcrete foundations and constructions, so where did this pit or cavitycome from? The existence of this underground cavity is also indicativeof a large underground explosion.

Thirdly, the descriptions and Sedan photographs of the Base Surge andMain Cloud from an underground nuclear blast correspond with whatwas seen at the WTC.

128 Ground Zero

The Blast Signature

Pulverisation of the WTC

A very important piece of evidence is the eyewitness accounts byrescue workers that very little solid concrete rubble remained. Anestimated 90,000 tonnes of concrete in each tower was literallypulverised into dust, sand or grit sized particles - an absolutelyunprecedented event.

This indicates that the forces on the concrete were so high theyexceeded its tensile strength and literally tore it apart.

The tensile strength of a material is simply the amount of force per unitarea required to stretch it apart and break it. While concrete is quitestrong in compression - in other words, one can “squash” it into itselfwith a very heavy load - it is very weak in tension, if one tries to pull itapart.

In the description of underground nuclear blasts above, it is describedhow if the forces produced by the shock wave generated by a nuclearblast exceed the tensile strength of the ground, the ground will literallybe torn apart in horizontal layers as the wave travels through it.

Whatever could pulverise the concrete of the WTC into dust must havebeen a tensile force of enormous proportions - and a force that wasapplied throughout the whole building almost instantaneously, so that itcould free fall without support from below to slow the fall.

Certainly, a nuclear blast detonated within the concrete foundations ofthe WTC would send a massive shock wave up the structure of thebuilding and back down again at over 150 feet per second, pulverising itin its entirety almost immediately. As we saw above, the timescalematches with that observed for the collapse of the towers. (The figure of150ft s

-1

will vary depending on the type of ground strata, but in manyways concrete can be considered to be “artificial stone” or rock).

On July 30th 1995, Brigadier General (ret.) USAF Benton K. Partinpublished an analysis of the bomb damage to the Alfred P. MurrahFederal Building in Oklahoma, in which he proved that the building hadbeen destroyed by a controlled demolition, not by a relatively weakammonium nitrate truck bomb.

In his analysis

1

, he makes the following observations (emphasis added):

“By contrast, heavily reinforced concrete structures can be destroyedeffectively through detonation of explosives in contact with thereinforced concrete beams and columns. For example, the entirebuilding remains in Oklahoma City were collapsed with 100-plus

1. “Bomb Damage Analysis of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building” July 30th 1995, Benton K. Partin, Brig. Gen. USAF (Ret.), http:/www.intellex.com/~rigs/page1/okc/report.htm

Ground Zero 129

The Effects of an Underground Nuclear Explosion

relatively small charges inserted into drilled holes in the columns. Thetotal weight of all charges was on the order of 200 pounds.

“The detonation wave pressure (1,000,000 to 1,500,000 pounds persquare inch) from a high detonation velocity contact explosivesweeps into the column as a wave of compressive deformation.Since the pressure in the wave of deformation far exceeds the yieldstrength of the concrete (about 3,500 pounds per square inch) by afactor of approximately 300, the

concrete is turned into granularsand and dust

until the wave dissipates to below the yield strength ofthe concrete. This leaves a relatively smooth but granular surface, withprotruding, bare reinforcement rods, a distinctive signature of damageby contact explosives. The effect of the contact explosive on thereinforcement rods themselves can only be seen under microscopicmetallurgical examination. (The rods are inertially confined during theexplosion and survive basically intact because of their much higheryield strength and plasticity.)”

Partin tells us therefore that a very small amount of high explosive isrequired to demolish a building if it is in contact with the concretestructure.

It is the compressive shock wave travelling through the concrete thatdestroys it, turning the concrete into granular sand and dust. In the caseof the WTC, shaped cutting charges were also applied to the steelstructure to cut it. Even though pre-stressed steel reinforcement rodsare inserted into concrete to improve its tensile strength, these areuseless when faced with a tensive or compressive shock wave of thismagnitude.

Therefore, we can see how devastating the effects of a small nuclearblast of even a few tonnes TNT equivalence would be. No matter howimposing and invulnerable the structure of the WTC may look, theconcrete would simply turn to dust under the impact of a shock wavethat exceeds its yield strength by a factor of 300 or more.

We also know there was a shock wave of Richter Magnitude 2.3 fromthe impulsive spike recorded at the Palisades Earth Observatory, whichis the equivalent of at least 2 to 5 tonnes (5,000lbs - 10,000lbs) of TNT.

Pyroclastic Flow

The USGS Report, eyewitness accounts and hundreds of photographsand videos show that as the towers collapsed, an enormous dust cloudrolled out over the ground in a pyroclastic flow.

Eyewitness accounts told of the hot dust racing down the streets,sizzling as it went, setting combustible material on fire.

This is exactly what one observes in the Base Surge from a shallowunderground nuclear blast - a high speed surge of material, pulverisedand vaporised by the atomic blast, spreading out at high speed in all

130 Ground Zero

The Blast Signature

directions across the ground as a plume rises thousands of feet into theair.

6.4 Conclusion

The physical appearance of the WTC collapse is similar to andconsistent with what one would expect from an underground nuclearexplosion.

The same key physical markers are seen: a violent explosive initialburst, followed by a strongly upwardly rising plume or main cloud and apyroclastic rapidly moving base surge across the ground.

The photographs of the initial burst are incontrovertible proof inthemselves that an extremely violent explosion took place, far greatereven than in a conventional implosion demolition. The energy analysispresented earlier shows that the energy required to turn the concreteinto dust exceeded the gravitational potential energy of the buildingsand the thermal energy of the fuel by many orders of magnitude. Anuclear explosion would certainly make up for that energy deficit.


and Web Sites

Explosions in the Basement

http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/underground/underground_explosions.htm

First-hand Accounts of Underground Explosions In The North Tower

This article from Chief Engineer magazine presents eyewitness accountof the moments after the first plane crash, and describes evidence oflarge explosions in the lobby, parking garage and subbasement levels ofWTC-1 at the time of the crash

It contains some fascinating first-hand accounts of the events ofSeptember 11 as recounted by operating engineers on the scene. Oneof the most remarkable is the story of Mike Pecoraro, who was workingin the 6th sub-basement of the North Tower when the first plane hit.Here are some excerpts:

Stationary Engineer Mike Pecoraro

At about 6:45 he went to the mechanical shop in the secondsubbasement, ate his breakfast and chatted with his co-workers whowere also arriving for the normal 8:00 a.m. beginning of their shift.Mike’s assignment that day would be to continue constructing agantry that would be used to pull the heads from the 2,500 tonchillers, located in the 6th sub- basement level of the tower. 49,000

Ground Zero 131


tons of refrigeration equipment were located in the lower level of thetower. The 2,500 ton units were the smallest in use...

Deep below the tower, Mike Pecoraro was suddenly interrupted in hisgrinding task by a shake on his shoulder from his co-worker. “Did yousee that?” he was asked. Mike told him that he had seen nothing.“You didn’t see the lights flicker?”, his co-worker asked again. “No,”Mike responded, but he knew immediately that if the lights hadflickered, it could spell trouble. A power surge or interruption couldplay havoc with the building’s equipment. If all the pumps trip out orpulse meters trip, it could make for a very long day bringing the entirecenter’s equipment back on-line.

Mike told his co-worker to call upstairs to their Assistant ChiefEngineer and find out if everything was all right. His co-worker madethe call and reported back to Mike that he was told that the AssistantChief did not know what happened but that the whole buildingseemed to shake and there was a loud explosion. They had beentold to stay where they were and “sit tight” until the Assistant Chiefgot back to them. By this time, however, the room they were workingin began to fill with a white smoke. “We smelled kerosene,” Mikerecalled, “I was thinking maybe a car fire was upstairs”, referring tothe parking garage located below grade in the tower but above thedeep space where they were working.

The two decided to ascend the stairs to the C level, to a smallmachine shop where Vito Deleo and David Williams were supposedto be working. When the two arrived at the C level, they found themachine shop gone.

“There was nothing there but rubble, “Mike said. “We’re talking abouta 50 ton hydraulic press – gone!” The two began yelling for their co-workers, but there was no answer. They saw a perfect line of smokestreaming through the air. “You could stand here,” he said, “and twoinches over you couldn’t breathe. We couldn’t see through the smokeso we started screaming.” But there was still no answer.

The two made their way to the parking garage, but found that it, too,was gone. “There were no walls, there was rubble on the floor, andyou can’t see anything” he said.

They decided to ascend two more levels to the building’s lobby. Asthey ascended to the B Level, one floor above, they wereastonished to see a steel and concrete fire door that weighed about300 pounds, wrinkled up “like a piece of aluminium foil” and lying onthe floor. “They got us again,” Mike told his co-worker, referring to theterrorist attack at the center in 1993. Having been through thatbombing, Mike recalled seeing similar things happen to the building’sstructure. He was convinced a bomb had gone off in the building.

Consider the implications of what Mr. Pecoraro describes: at this pointthe only overt damage to the building was the plane crash some 95

132 Ground Zero

The Blast Signature

floors above, which could not have caused violent explosionsunderground.

Since the towers were anchored at the base to the bedrock the shakingcaused by the crash would have been greatest close to the crash site,getting progressively weaker as it approached the rigid attachment atthe bottom.

Yet the underground damage he describes cannot have been the resultof a mere shaking - nothing short of an explosion could reduce thecontents of a machine shop to rubble. The Palisades Earth Observatoryrecorded M

L

0.9 and 0.7 spikes at 8:46 and 9:03 which are far too highto be accounted for by the aircraft crashes - given we know that a 0.5tonne urea nitrate bomb in the WTC basement in 1993 produced noseismic signal at all at the Palisades. Given that, how could aircraftimpacts 95 floors above register such high Richter magnitudes? Thesereports of underground explosions are corroborated by the seismicrecord. In fact, it’s the other way round: the seismic record shows therewas a very powerful explosion under each tower at the same time aseach aircraft impact. Mike Pecoraro gives us an eyewitness account ofwhat the seismic record has already proven.

The refrigeration plant actually consisted of 7 seven thousand toncentrifugal chillers to provide air conditioning to 10 million square feet ofoffice space in the WTC complex, with an additional two 2,500 ton“piggy back” units. The chillers produced chilled water (from the HudsonRiver) to run the air conditioning. The 7 main units were located mid waybetween the two towers in sub level B5, a level 3 stories high.

FIGURE 55 WTC SUB BASEMENT LEVELS

B-1

B-2

B-3

B-4

B-5

B-6 PATH Tube

Concourse Shopping mall

Parking

Parking

Parking

ParkingCentrifugal Chillers

Refrigeration plant pipe gallery

Utility

Utility

Utility

Utility

North Tower

Vista Hotel

Ground Zero 133


Apparently, the peak cooling load

1

of the WTC complex was 29,000tons leaving 25,000 tons for “standby”. This seems rather high,particularly since air conditioning is only required in the summer. Aseparate auxiliary condenser water cooling system with a capacity of3600 tons was used to supply year round air conditioning for thepermanent loads such as mainframe computers etc.

Therefore, for half the year 54,000 tons of water chilling capacity wasstanding idle and during the summer, the peak load - not the continuousload - only used 54% of the system’s capacity.

It seems possible that this refrigeration plant had at least some sparecapacity and would be ideally situated to provide chilled coolant waterfor the thermal Light Water Reactors beneath the WTC.

FIGURE 56 LOCATION OF HVAC REFRIGERATION UNITS

It seems that other office buildings in the USA use about 3000 tons ofcentrifugal chiller capacity

2

per 1 million square feet of office space,when using a small number of large capacity units rather than a largenumber of small capacity units. One modern installation (First UnionTower, Orlando) uses two 230 ton units for 292,000 square feet or theequivalent of only 2000 tons per million square feet. Very approximately,one would expect the WTC Complex with 10 million square feet to haveabout 30,000 tons of chiller capacity. This correlates with the peak loadof 29,000 tons.

After the February 1993 attack, a temporary chiller installation of only21,000 tons was designed and set up to cool the complex. This proved

1. “The WTC: One Year After the Bomb”, HPAC Engineering, February 1994Tonnage refers to cooling capacity, not the weight of the chiller units2. Case studies at www.trane.com

NE Plaza BldgCustom's Bldg

WTC 1

WTC 2

SE Plaza Bldg

Vista Hotel

Fountain

7 Seven ton Chiller Units

134 Ground Zero

The Blast Signature

adequate. The full 49,000 tons of original equipment was thenprogressively repaired and put back into service.

Interestingly, the Pentagon, a very low rise building, uses an evenhigher amount of refrigeration relative to its 6.6 million square feet thanthe WTC; these may be old units - or is it cooling the extensiveunderground facilities which exist under the building?

Comments by Mark Loizeaux

In the 24th July 2004 edition of New Scientist appeared an interviewwith Mark Loizeaux, President of Controlled Demolition Inc. Mr.Loizeaux is one of the leading world experts in the art of demolishingbuildings.

This is a very illuminating interview and I have quoted extracts from ithere. Emphasis has been added.

Baltimore Blasters

New Scientist vol. 183 issue 2457 - 24 July 2004, page 48

http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/articlearticle.jsp?rp=1&id=mg18324575.700

How do you make a building dance down the street? Or walksideways? It's the kind of control that only a master of blasting anddemolition like Mark Loizeaux could pull off. He's head of ControlledDemolition Incorporated, the company known to everyone withsomething difficult to demolish. Since his father Jack set up thecompany, the family has brought down or blown up 7000 structuresranging from bridges to weapons, everywhere from the US toArgentina via Iraq. Liz Else talked to him within earshot of the rest ofthe family at CDI's headquarters deep in the peaceful countryside northof Baltimore.

Mark Loizeaux took a degree in business administration at theUniversity of Tennessee, where he also studied architecturalengineering. Apart from never having "done anything constructive in ourentire history", the Loizeaux family set many world records, includingimploding the largest single building (the J.L. Hudson department storein Detroit, 134 metres tall and 200,000 square metres). Other majorblasts starred in movies such as Mars Attacks!, Lethal Weapon 3,Enemy of the State.

..................................

Planned to the last millisecond?

Completely planned. It has to be the right job in the first place, theright explosive, the right pattern of laying the charges, and sometimes,which sounds odd,

the right repairs to bring it down as we want

,so no one or no other structure is harmed. And by differentially

Ground Zero 135


controlling the velocity of failure in different parts of the structure, youcan make it walk, you can make it spin, you can make it dance. We'vetaken it and moved it, then dropped it or moved it, twisted it and movedit down further - and then stopped it and moved it again. We've droppedstructures 15 storeys, stopped them and then laid them sideways.We'll have structures start facing north and end up going to the north-west to avoid hitting something.

What sort of explosives do you use now?

There are two types of explosive - low order and high order. Lowmakes a slow heaving explosion, which pushes more than it shatters.We tend to look for a shattering explosive because

we want toinstantaneously remove the structural integrity of whateverwe're working on

. So we would opt for nitroglycerin or NG-baseddynamite. With a steel structure, we use something called a linearshaped charge that concentrates the force of a high explosive calledRDX. For example, it took

80 pounds

of shaped charge to bring downtwo New York gas tanks built with

5 million pounds of steel.

Few people would be able to do that kind of reckoning, they'd rely oncomputers...

This is where I truly struggle and it may have something to do withbad synapses or something, I don't know what it is, but I really havea problem with it. I like computers. I think CAD [computer-aideddesign] has revolutionised construction and safety of structuresworldwide for people in differing environments and circumstances. ButCAD is used for putting things together where you specify the steel,the concrete, you assume construction methods within parameters ofbuilding codes. You assume it was put in using health and safety-approved methods and inspections. It does not allow for weathering,structural fatigue, modification, all the things that don't show up onblueprints.

Is demolition too different a world?

Yes. You move into a different category of structure that is distressed -failed yet standing structures that have failed as functioning structuresbecause they break building codes or have been burnt, struck bylightning or tragically these days bombed or hit by planes. And itfrightens me that would-be advancers of the demolition arts think thatthey can take a program - which is entirely contingent on the data putinto it - to analyse what is going to happen in a structural systemwhich is beyond definition. It can be bracketed, it cannot be defined.When you design a building you can specify each and everyvariable, but that is not the case in structures that have endured a life.

You sound like you develop a sort of sixth sense for the job?

I think that's possibly true. Obviously a lot of it is technical and basedon evidence - like picking the job by looking at photographs, talking topeople, going there and so on. But even then, there is a feeling and

136 Ground Zero

The Blast Signature

some of them are not right for a number of reasons you can't alwaysarticulate - including

customers who don't seem right.

Were you involved with the 9/11 clean-up?

Our crews worked with one of the main contractors after 9/11, to pullthe shards of skin of the building from the south tower of the WorldTrade Center, out of this 15 storey gash in the side of the DeutscheBank building.

When you watched 9/11, did you imagine that the towers would comedown like that?

I did a report on the World Trade Center when I was at college and Iknew exactly how it was built. I understood the concept.

When I sawthe first plane hit

, my mind first went to: "Oh my god, what'shappened? Is it a plane,

a private plane

?" But I was watching alongwith most of the western world when the second plane hit. Andeverything changed. When I saw what hit, that it was an airliner, that itwas loaded with jet fuel, I remembered the long clear span configurationfrom the central core to the outer skin of the World Trade Center fromthe report I did. And we had just taken down two 40-storey structures inNew York..................................

I still had some cellphone numbers so when the second plane hit Isaid: "Start calling all the cellphones, tell them that the building is goingto come down." It was frenetic, nobody could get through even withspeed dialling. And I just sat there, just sat there. Of course, buildingnumber 7, which is where the emergency management headquarterswas, was on fire. I'd been in that office two months before. And I satthere watching, I picked up the phone and I called a couple of peopleon the National Research Council Committee involved in assessing theimpact of

explosives

. They said: "What do you think this is, thatthey're going to fail, they're both going to fail?" The expression aroundwas they're going to pancake down, almost vertically. And they did. Itwas the only way they could fail. It was inevitable. And it was horrific.

Could they have been built in such a way that they would havewithstood the impact?

Bad question - they did withstand the impact. The correct question iscould they have been built to withstand the consequences, the fire?

Well - could they?

I'll defer to the reports coming out, but I will say - is society willing topay for it? It's far cheaper to take the battle to terrorists than let thembring it to us.

.................................

Ground Zero 137


Are you mostly successful in that?

We have an enviable record. No one has been killed as a result of ourexplosives demolition operations - though we have had to stoppeople hiding in dangerous places to get good pictures - one even

disguised himself as a bush.

.................................

Yet you've worked in many environments?

Oh yes. Right now we are working at a

nuclear plant

in Maine, and onein Massachusetts, and getting ready to start one in Connecticut. We'reworking on nuclear facilities in Colorado Springs, and at Hanford inWashington State.

Some comments and questions:

1.

Someone disguised himself “as a bush”? Not in a bush or behind a bush but as a bush!

2.

What are the co-incidental chances of Mr. Loizeaux of Controlled Demolition Inc. being one of the very few people in the world who saw the first plane hit? And he thought it was a private plane - a small aircraft? Who asked Mr. Loizeaux to be in that place that day?

3.

He had been in the Emergency Management Centre in Building 7 two months earlier. Doing what? Planning for what emergency? At whose instigation and request?

4.

Why did he start calling people on the NRC who assess the impact of explosives after the second plane hit? Surely he would want to talk to people who deal with kerosene fires, aircraft crashes etc.

5.

What does he mean by “customers who don’t seem right”? How could you get such a customer in his business - insurance fraudsters? People who want to pick his brains on how to demolish a building? Clearly, it is such a black art demolishing a building that it absolutely requires someone with experience - it cannot be planned analytically.

6.

“The right repairs to bring it down as we want”. There have been reports that work was being carried out on the Twin Towers in the weeks before the collapse, including ostensible “repair work”. Some of the central elevators were apparently always out of commission during the preceding weeks. Was this actually preparation to demolish the towers? Mr. Loizeaux says he was intimately familiar with the building. Were his brains tapped to find out how to do it, pretending it was to protect against a terrorist attack?

7.

Only 80 pounds of RDX shaped charge could bring down a structure containing 5 million pounds of steel. So, as also confirmed by Brigadier General Partin on the controlled demolition of the Alfred P. Murrah Building, only a very small amount of explosive is needed to demolish these steel frame buildings.

8.

Mr. Loizeaux uncharacteristically dodges the question about whether the WTC should have withstood the fire - and in mid-2004, 3 years later, what “reports coming out” is he referring to? There have in fact been no thorough and candid engineering analyses carried out into how

138 Ground Zero

The Blast Signature

the buildings collapsed - only the fairy tale put out that the jet fuel melted the 47 central steel columns.

9.

Mr. Loizeaux comments that “We want to instantaneously remove the structural integrity of whatever we're working on.” To use the weight of the building to help bring it down. This is what occurred with the WTC.

Conclusion

Therefore Mr. Loizeaux makes a number of interesting comments aboutthe WTC and the controlled demolition of buildings in general. My viewis that he is in fact whistleblowing, to give people in what has becomeknown as the “911 Research Community” some useful hints andpointers.

From what he says, it is clear that anyone intent on carrying out anillegal or clandestine controlled demolition of a building would requirethe advice of an expert on how to do it. The best way to obtain thatadvice would be under a pretext of some sort, such as security planning.The WTC had already been bombed twice unsuccessfully. Therefore toask CDI for their advice on the consequences of another bomb attackand how a “terrorist” would have to do it to be successful, so thatsecurity could be put in place against it, would seem like a sensibleprecaution. They might ask CDI where charges would need to beplaced, so that security cameras could be installed to cover thoselocations. This was already a bomb damaged building, so again itwould be necessary to approach an expert and it would seemsensible to CDI to ask for their expert advice.

Indeed, one feature that had been remarked upon is just how smallmany of the pieces of the steel beams were. They had been cut into 18”long sections by cutting charges. This seems like overkill. It lendssupport to the idea that the demolition was not in fact carried out byexperts but in order to make absolutely sure of the job, excess use wasmade of cutting charges by less experienced people.

Ground Zero 139

7 The China Syndrome

“If the radiance of a thousand suns“Were to burst at once into the sky“That would be like the splendour of the Mighty One“I am become Shiva“The Destroyer of Worlds”.

The words spoken by Robert Oppenheimer after the Trinity Test, the first atomic bomb of the modern age. Alamagordo, New Mexico, 5:29:45, 16th July 1945: Ground Zero of the Manhattan Project.

7.1 Introduction

What type of nuclear devices could have been used to individuallydemolish the two WTC towers, and perhaps Building No 7 withoutdestroying half of New York at the same time?

Our initial assumption was that the device must have been a “micro-nuke” or more technically a Small Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM).

However, it appears that in fact the Twin Towers were brought down bythe deliberate explosion of a clandestine nuclear reactor installed undereach building. This was associated with a core meltdown - the ChinaSyndrome.

It is interesting to note that the church at the WTC was called TrinityChurch.

The program to develop the atomic bomb was of course called theManhattan Project. One of the main project planning and control officeswas located in Manhattan. The name of the first atomic bomb test itselfwas Operation Trinity.

Did the original or a later Manhattan Project involve the installation ofnuclear reactors under Manhattan?

140 Ground Zero

The China Syndrome

7.2 The SADM

In the 1960s, US Marines and Special Forces were training to use SmallAtomic Demolition Munitions (SADMs) to sabotage enemy installations.In one scenario, an operative would jump out of a helicopter somedistance off-shore, with a SADM attached to a flotation device. Once inthe water, the operative would swim or row a dinghy towards the shorebased target such as an enemy port, dockyard, naval installation etc.The SADM would then be left in the harbour or nearby on a timed fuse.

A Nuclear Artillery Shell called “the Davy Crockett” was also deployedby the US Army in the 1960s and 70s. The shell weighed 76lbs and hada low yield of about 10 tonnes of TNT equivalent.

The latest SADMs built by the Russians in the 1990s were known tohave a yield of below 10 tonnes - ideal for destroying a very largebuilding or a city block.

The seismic interpretation by the Palisades Earth Observatoryestimates the magnitude of the short impulsive seismic event just beforeeach tower collapsed at Richter Magnitude 2.3. With good couplingbetween the explosion and the ground, the TNT equivalent of the blastwould be between 2 and 5 tonnes. We know that the coupling is in factpoor, so the actual explosive power was higher - maybe 10 to 20 tonnes.

These estimates are well within the range of possibility for either oldergeneration nuclear demolition munitions or the latest generation ofmodern “micro nuke”, or SADM, which have been under developmentsince the beginning of the 1990s.

The photographs below show a MADM - Medium Atomic DemolitionMunition from the 1950s or 1960s and a backpack portable SADM.

FIGURE 57 MADM AND SADM

Ground Zero 141

Evidence for a Core Meltdown

One can see that the devices are certainly small enough to be installedwithout too much difficulty in the basement of a building if required.

There is a certain ironic twist to the fact that SADM sounds like“Saddam”.

However, as we have discussed earlier, if the Twin Towers had beenbrought down by a purpose designed nuclear weapon - a small atomicbomb - there would have been no residual heat left persisting formonths after the blast. In addition, the sheer quantity of fallout producedpoints towards a much larger source of fissile material than would befound in a small atomic bomb, which would contain less than 10kg to20kg of uranium or plutonium.

7.3 Evidence for a Core Meltdown

What factors lead us to the conclusion that the nuclear device whichdestroyed the Twin Towers was a nuclear reactor rather than an atomicbomb?

This section presents and discusses the main indicators.

The WTC Light Memorial

When a nuclear fission chain reaction occurs, a very distinctivesignature is produced which shows that an extra-ordinary chemicalreaction is underway.

That signature is the emission of an intense blue light, known asCerenkov Radiation.

This is an extremely intense and dangerous radiation, though also eerilybeautiful.

A well known example of Cerenkov Radiation occurs when cosmic raysenter the atmosphere from outer space. Travelling at high speed, thecosmic rays can exceed the local speed of light in the atmosphere itself.If radiation travelling in a medium (air, water, glass for instance) exceedsthe speed of light in that medium, then this blue Cerenkov light isemitted.

Cerenkov Radiation is therefore a signature of highly energetic intenseradiation.

When the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in 1986, causing acore meltdown, the lid of the reactor weighing 2000 tonnes was blownclean off. The reactor core was exposed. An interview with theeyewitness Alexander Yuvchenko was published by New Scientist onthe 21st August 2004, a month after the interview with Mark Loizeaux.

Yuvchenko described the sight when he went outside to try and obtain aclearer idea of what had happened to reactor number 4:

142 Ground Zero

The China Syndrome

“From where I stood, I could see a huge beam of projected lightflooding up into infinity from the reactor. It was like a laser light, causedby the ionisation of the air. It was light-bluish and it was verybeautiful. I watched it for several seconds. If I’d stood there for just afew minutes I would probably have died on the spot...”

Yuvchenko then went up to the reactor hall with three other workers.

“What happened when you got back to the reactor hall?”

“We climbed up to a ledge. I stayed behind propping up the door. Istood there listening to their reaction to what they saw, which looked likea volcano crater....”

It is important to remember that the Chernobyl disaster happened in themiddle of the night, so the blue light was clearly visible streaming up intothe night sky.

Several months after the WTC collapse, an event occurred which lendscircumstantial support to the other indications that the nuclear explosionwas caused by an induced runaway chain reaction and core meltdown.

In early 2002, a Light Memorial was set up to “commemorate” the TwinTowers. Two banks of 44 halogen spotlights were set up at the WTCsite, to project an intense beam of light into the sky where the towersused to stand. The lights were only switched on from dusk till 11pm eachnight between the 11th March and the 13th April 2002. This would havebeen after the main clear up operation and perhaps when the concretecovering was being placed over the site.

The colour of the two beams of this Light Memorial was blue.

FIGURE 58 WTC LIGHT MEMORIAL

Ground Zero 143


This certainly matches Yuvchenko’s description of the Chernobyl reactorcore: a huge beam of projected light blue light flooding up into infinity.

Is this really just a co-incidence?

FIGURE 59

It is possible that by Spring 2002, as the last clearance work was beingundertaken and the site was being rather strangely covered withconcrete, that the reactor cores were exposed to the atmosphere for atleast some of the time. In order to cover up the intense blue light thatwould otherwise attract attention - and advertise what lay beneath therubble - these two light projectors were set up with the cover story ofbeing a “Light Memorial” for a period of one month. They were used toshine up into the sky in the same place as the Cerenkov Radiation beingemitted by the reactor cores to mask them or at least provide a coverstory to explain them.

Why was the light memorial switched on for only a few hours, from duskuntil 11pm?

Perhaps for security reasons work was only started on the exposedreactors at dusk to prevent people in the buildings overlooking the sitefrom seeing what was happening. Most of the office workers would havegone home by that time as well. Work would also have had to be oflimited duration to limit the radiation exposure to the personnel workingon the final stage of the operation and to limit radiation escapes thatmight be picked up by people with Geiger counters in the vicinity.

It is also possible that if work was carried out during the day on theexposed reactor cores, the Cerenkov Radiation would be much lessvisible and maybe invisible. The light projectors may have only beenneeded at dusk to camouflage the Cerenkov emissions.

144 Ground Zero

The China Syndrome

Residual Heat and Molten Steel

As we have seen, one of the main indicators that the nuclear explosionsthat destroyed the Twin Towers and possibly Building No 7 came fromthe runaway chain reaction of a nuclear reactor, rather than an atomicbomb, is the intense heat which persisted for weeks and months underthe rubble.

An atomic bomb would simply explode, with all its material fissioningand that would be that. There would be no residual heat source left thatwould continue to vaporise glass and concrete for weeks afterwards.

If the core of an operating nuclear reactor is not cooled sufficiently, forwhatever reason, it will melt, reaching a temperature of over 2,700˙C.The heat to do this is generated by the natural radioactive decay of thenuclear fuel in the core - that is without even having to remove themoderator control rods that control the rate of the fission chain reaction.Even if the reactor is shut down - i.e the fission chain reaction is stopped- heat generated by the continued radioactive decay will melt the core ifthe cooling system is not kept operating.

A core meltdown would leave indeed a large pool of molten steel (andother materials), from the hundreds or thousands of tonnes of stainlesssteel pressure vessel and associated equipment that surround the core.In the so-called China Syndrome, the molten nuclear fuel, molten steeland other material literally melt their way through the concrete bioshieldof the reactor and then the underlying bedrock until eventually it runs outof thermal energy.

It was originally suggested that the core would head towards China if itkept on going, from which came the name “The China Syndrome”.

The pools of molten steel, still present 5 weeks after the collapse, arevery strong evidence that indeed a core meltdown is what occurred,fuelling the intense heat production for 5 or 6 weeks and longer. A coremelt temperature of 2,700 - 3,000˙C would certainly account for thevolcanic temperatures encountered at the site, the vaporisation of glassand soil, the emission of a chromium and nickel aerosol and thepresence of molten steel so long after the event.

Alexander Yuvchenko’s description of the reactor core as a “volcanocrater” vividly describes this scenario.

Quantity of Fallout

The other indication that the device was a reactor is the sheer quantityof fallout. Different estimates are available for the mass of the towersand how much of that mass was steel as opposed to concrete. But wecan say conservatively that at least 100,000 tonnes of structuralconcrete from each of the two towers was pulverised into dust by theexplosions.

Ground Zero 145


With a minimum of 600ppm of Strontium and 1000ppm by weight of Zincpresent in the dust, that amount of dust translates into approximately 60and 100 tonnes of strontium and zinc respectively per tower. This is anabsolutely astronomical amount. If we generously assume that as muchas a third of the Uranium originally present transmuted into Strontium,this would put the original mass of Uranium present at about 470 tonnes

per tower

. This is a staggering amount. If a lower proportion of theUranium in the reactors fissioned into Strontium, then even moreUranium would have had to be present.

Earlier, when discussing the presence of 1000ppm of Zinc on page 66,we estimated that at least 700 tonnes of Uranium might originally havebeen present, at a conservative estimate - probably double that.

How much Uranium is there in a nuclear reactor?

This of course varies depending on the size and power of the reactor.

Taking again the example of the Indian Prototype Fast BreederReactor

1

, this contains 1758 fuel subassemblies in the core; eachsubassembly is made up of 217 tubes or fuel pins with an outsidediameter or 6.6mm, an internal diameter of 5.7mm and a length of 2.7m.This gives a volume of 6.9 x 10

-5

m

3

per pin and a total fuel volume of26.3 m

3

in the core. The fuel used is normally an 80% - 20% mixture ofUranium Oxide and Plutonium Oxide but enriched Uranium was used onearlier FBR reactors. Let’s assume we use a pure Uranium fuel, whichmeans we are exaggerating the amount of Uranium present in an FBR,but on the other hand FBRs (of which there are only a handful inoperation) have a smaller core than a conventional thermal reactor - sothis estimate will actually be lower than what we would expect in aconventional thermal reactor.

Uranium has a density of 18,950 kg m

-3

. Therefore with a volume of26.3m

3

of fuel, this makes nearly 500 tonnes of uranium present in thecore.

Our estimates may not be so wide of the mark. Our 700 tonne estimatewas conservative - it may have been more than double that. In fact, ourestimates tend to strongly support the view that there were indeed twonuclear reactors, one under each tower, which accounted for the twostrong seismic signals and nuclear blast signatures. The amount offallout is consistent with the presence of two reactors, not one.

For another example, we consider the small Magnox nuclear reactorfirst built at Calder Hall in the UK, which went live in 1956. Thiscontained 10,200 fuel elements, each a rod of Uranium one metre longwith a diameter of 25mm. The total volume of Uranium was therefore5m

3

and the total weight of Uranium fuel in the core was 95 tonnes.

1. “Development of Fuels and Structural Materials for FBRs” Sadhana vol 27 part 5, October 2002, p527 - 558, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research

146 Ground Zero

The China Syndrome

This was a small reactor by modern standards but still contains over1000 times as much Uranium as would be found in a small atomicbomb.

The reactors under the WTC would most likely be of the conventionalthermal or Light Water type which use metallic enriched Uranium fuel,not uranium oxide.

The quantity of fallout that was measured in the WTC dust is so greatthat it provides overwhelming evidence that only a reactor could be thesource.

The Explosive Power of a Critical Reactor

One may wonder why a nuclear reactor containing tens if not hundredsof tonnes of fissile material did not destroy all of New York if it wentcritical and entered a runaway chain reaction.

The answer is that the fissile material in an atomic bomb is compressedand contained into a small volume. The energy is concentrated and allof the fissile material fissions at once to create a large explosion.

The runaway chain reaction in a reactor is less constrained. A reactor isdesigned in the first place not to explode. If it does go supercritical, theexplosion that is produced will probably not involve all the fissile materialand not all at once. There will also still be moderator material (graphiteetc.) in the core and the geometry of the fuel is not of course optimisedfor explosive effect.

The best guide to what can happen is what occurred at Chernobyl,when the core meltdown blew off the 2000 tonne lid from reactornumber 4 and devastated the plant - but did not flatten the area for milesaround. What was left was an open mass of fissile material undergoinga nuclear fission chain reaction relatively slowly, but still generatingintense volcanic quantities of heat. This may be similar to the wellknown “natural” nuclear reactor discovered in the Congo.

Figure 60 is a photograph of the Chernobyl reactor building after theexplosion and core meltdown.

Ground Zero 147


FIGURE 60 CHERNOBYL AFTER THE BLAST

Depending on how critical the reactor goes and how quickly, a widerange of explosive effects could probably be produced.

Some insight into what might happen can be inferred from the followingextracts from the autobiography of nuclear engineer A. StanleyThompson

1

:

“In 1947 I participated in an orientation tour at the Hanford Works tosee first hand the operation of a nuclear reactor. My strongest memoryof that visit is the unearthly but beautiful streamers of blue radianceemanating from elongated objects at the bottom of a deep pool ofwater. The objects were spent fuel elements which had beenremoved from the reactor. The water above them protected theenvironment from their lethal radiation and also removed the heat fromradioactive decay which otherwise would have melted the elements.The blue light was from "Cerenkov radiation," emitted when a particlereleased from the radioactive fuel element passed through thetransparent water at a speed greater than the velocity of light inwater. A physicist who had known Louis Slotin told me his story toteach me respect for the radiation depicted by that blue light.”

“On May 21, 1946, at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory,Louis Slotin demonstrated his nuclear assembly of a plutoniumsphere in beryllium shells. When he accidentally dropped the topberyllium shell into too close contact with the plutonium sphere, hecreated a momentary nuclear reaction stronger than he intended, witha millisecond flash of blue light and a noticeable increase in thetemperature of the assembly. There were no jaw or claw marks orother immediate signs of the Jabberwock, but Slotin received amassive radiation dose. After nine days during which "his body was

1. “My Life in the 20th Century”, A. Stanley Thompson, Spencer Creek Press 2000

148 Ground Zero

The China Syndrome

dissolving into protoplasmic debris," he died. His death followed thatof Harry Daghlian in a previous accident with the same assembly. “

Later, he gives the following account of an experimental test:

“The third set of experiments, under the acronym, SPERT, at theNational Reactor Test Station studied transients of reactor power. Thereactor was composed of thin sheets of aluminium, bearing the nuclearfuel, immersed in a pool of water, the surface of the water being opento the atmosphere. Reactor power was slowly increased bygradually

pulling out control rods.

At a certain low power an

unstable oscillation

appeared suddenly and

built rapidly to violentproportions

, resulting in a flash of blue light from Cerenkov radiationand the explosive expulsion of water. The

peak of power wasgreater by a factor of thousands

than the level from which theoscillations had started. It was concluded that the unexpectedinstability was related to coolant boiling. I developed mathematicalcriteria to try to predict the threshold of reactor power at which suchunstable oscillations would occur. “

Thompson tells us here how unforeseen instabilities arose as thecontrol rods were removed, building up rapidly into a huge powerexcursion. Clearly, for experts in nuclear reactor operations, there wouldbe scope for tailoring the timing and intensity of the blast if they wantedto deliberately send a reactor critical.

It seems beyond the realms of likelihood that an aircraft crashing intothe WTC more than 90 storeys above ground level would affect theoperations of a clandestine nuclear reactor encased in a thick steel andconcrete bioshield buried below the official 7 basement levels. Theexcavations for the WTC foundations were officially 27 metres deep.Either the reactor installations were already in place even deeper beforethe towers were constructed or they were installed at the time of theWTC construction. The reactor core was likely to have been at least 80metres below the surface. For what purpose they were installed andwhat underground facilities they were powering, we can only guess.

Conclusion

The evidence demonstrates that the nuclear devices under the TwinTowers were nuclear reactors for the following reasons:

1.

The residual volcanic temperatures which persisted for over 6 weeks at least. The underground fires were not finally extinguished till December 2001.

2.

The pools of molten steel discovered under the towers, with emission of a nickel, chromium and vanadium aerosol from boiling stainless steel.

3.

The vast quantity of radioactive fallout detected, which exceeds by at least 3 or 4 orders of magnitude the quantity that would have been produced by an atomic bomb.

4.

The too coincidental “light memorial” identical to the Cerenkov Radiation that would be produced by a nuclear reactor core after meltdown and exposure to the atmosphere.

Ground Zero 149

The China Syndrome

7.4 The China Syndrome

In 1974, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission published a wellknown report called Reactor Safety Study (WASH-1400), generallyknown as the Rasmussen Report after its author. Some experts

1

believeit presents a too optimistic picture of the safety of nuclear reactors but itwas the first official report to publish detailed information on how a coremeltdown might occur and the likely consequences.There are two main ways in which the Core Meltdown of a nuclearreactor can occur:

1.

A Loss of Coolant Accident or LOCA.

2.

The occurrence of a Transient.

Loss of Coolant Accident

As we discussed earlier, if the system which cools the core of a nuclearreactor fails for whatever reason, the radioactive decay heat of thenuclear fuel will melt the core, even if the reactor is shut down. Themelting point of uranium fuel is 2,700 - 2,800˙C, which far exceeds themelting point of the stainless steel containment vessel.

The primary cooling system in a Light Water Reactor (LWR) ispressurised to between 1,500 and 3,000 psi. The stresses on thepipework can easily be imagined and the consequences of amechanical failure in the piping would be catastrophic at thosepressures.

According to the Rasmussen Report, breaks in the small pipes (half totwo inch diameter) in the primary cooling system are the single mostimportant contributor to the probability of a complete core meltdown.This is understandable, since the smallest pipes have the thinnest wallsand are under the greatest stress from the high pressure of the waterthey contain.

In the event of failure of the main cooling system, reactors are equippedwith a backup cooling system called the Emergency Core CoolingSystem. This is designed to inject large quantities of water into the coreto cool it down and prevent melting.

According to Dr Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for NuclearResponsibility

2

:

“Realizing the potential danger to human health and the environment,engineers have provided each reactor with an Emergency CoreCooling System (ECCS) having a large reservoir of ordinary water,designed to cool the fuel in the event of a "Loss of Coolant Accident"

1. Dr. Gordon Edwards, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, http://www.ccnr.org/rasmussen.html2. http://www.ccnr.org/feeder_pipes.html

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(LOCA) caused -- for example -- by a pipe break in the primarycooling system.

But there's a catch. The ECCS is not always available, even whenthe plant is operating at full power. Due to mechanical failure oroperator error, the ECCS may be partially or totally disabled, andhence unavailable, unbeknownst to the plant operators.

It happensyear after year; during certain stretches of time, the ECCS isnot fully available.

The same is true of the other safety systems,such as the containment system, and the emergency shut-downsystems. The Atomic Energy Control Board regularly records,measures, and publishes statistics on the unavailability of all safetysystems at Canadian nuclear reactors. Consequently, there is a slightbut very real chance that one or more of these systems will not beavailable when needed. In such circumstances, of course, theprobability of a core meltdown is much greater than would normally beanticipated.”

The actual performance of an ECCS in a real emergency is also anunknown quantity. If the reactor gets too hot too quickly, the pipes of theECCS may be damaged or start to melt - or become so hot that whencoolant water comes into contact with them, it turns to steam andexplodes. The scenario is subject to many unknowns.

The following excerpt

1

illustrates this:

“Will the ECCS be successful in rewetting and cooling the fuel in thereactor as predicted on the basis of extrapolations from laboratorytests? Is it possible that the rewetting of some fuel channels will delayfor an extended period of time the rewetting of others due to ''short-circuiting'' of the emergency coolant? Will fuel bundle and fuel channeldistortions under accident conditions interfere with cooling by theECCS to the point that additional gaseous fission products will bereleased from the uranium oxide fuel?

There are no simple answers to these and other questions andtherefore an analysis of the consequences of a LOCA involves aprocess of conservative assumptions in some cases and bestengineering judgment based on extrapolations from availableexperimental information in others.”

One can see that in fact, there is no guarantee that the emergencycooling systems will work as planned in the event of a LOCA.

As the core meltdown proceeds, the coolant system pipes will be meltedand the reactor core will come in direct contact with the coolant - wateror steam. This generates a violent explosion which will probably at the

1. http://www.ccnr.org/CANDU-Safety.html “Excerpts from: Nuclear Policy Review Background Papers Report ER81-2E Cat. No. M23-14/81-2E Department of Energy Mines and Resources Government of Canada Ottawa, 1982.”

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The China Syndrome

very least rupture the pressure vessel of the reactor, if not thecontainment building itself.

This Core Meltdown scenario would certainly account for the pools ofmolten steel discovered weeks later and the continual generation ofintense heat by the molten core, broiling the rubble in a pressure cookerinto a tiny sub-micron aerosol of vaporised glass, concrete, stainlesssteel and soil.

Yuvchenko’s description of the exposed Chernobyl reactor core againsprings to mind: a volcanic crater.

Transient

A “transient'' is a situation such as an uncontrolled increase in reactorpower or a loss of the normal flow of coolant. These events mean thereactor will have to be shut down and the decay heat removal systemsoperated to keep the core from overheating. This again emphasises the critical dependence of a nuclear reactor onthe cooling systems: any failure in the primary cooling system will meanthe reactor must be shut down and a backup cooling system put intooperation.

Stanley Thompson gave a graphic description of what happened to atest reactor when the control rods were slowly removed: unstableoscillations suddenly appeared as rapid fission occurred which pushedthe reactor power output to thousands of times the stable level.

A further extract from the Rasmussen Report is given here, whichdescribes a number of transients or “power excursions” which haveoccurred in nuclear reactors:

B1.2.3.2 Borax I Reactor (Ref. 35).

In 1954, at the National Reactor Testing station in Idaho, the Borax Ireactor was deliberately subjected to a potentially damaging

powerexcursion

in reactor safety studies: A power excursion lastingapproximately 30 milliseconds produced a peak power of

19,000megawatt-seconds

.

The power excursion

melted most of the fuel elements

. Thereactor tank (1/2 inch steel) was

ruptured

by the pressure (probablyin excess of 10,000 psi) resulting from the reaction between themolten metal and the water.

The sound of the explosion at the control station (1/2 mile away) wascomparable to that from 1 to 2 pounds of 40 percent dynamite.

B1.2.3.3 SPERT 1-D Reactor

During the final test of the destructive test program with the SPERT 1-Dcore, damaging pressure generation was observed. Pressure

152 Ground Zero

The China Syndrome

transducers recorded the generation of a pressure pulse larger than3000 psi which caused the

destruction of the core

.

The pressure pulse occurred some

15 milliseconds after initiationof the power excursion

. The power excursion rapidly overheatedthe fuel plates; the increased temperature

melted

the metal and thecladding of the fuel plates.

After the transient,

much of the fuel that had been molten wasfound dispersed in the coolant

.

B1.2.3.4 SL-1 Reactor

In January, 1961, a nuclear excursion occurred in the SL-1 reactor inIdaho. The total energy released in the excursion was approximately

130 MW-sec

(Ref. 51). Of this, 50 MW-sec was produced in the outerfuel elements in the core. This portion of the energy was slowlytransferred to the water coolant over 2 sec period, and no melting(uranium-aluminium alloy) of the outer fuel elements occurred.

About 50 to 60 megawatt-seconds of the total energy release waspromptly released by 12 heavily damaged inner fuel elements to thewater coolant in less than 30 milliseconds [a millisecond is 1 onethousandth of a second]. This prompt energy release resulted in rapidsteam formation in the core which accelerated the water above thecore and produced a water hammer that hit the pressure vessel lid.

The vessel, weighing about 30,000 lbs with its internals,sheared its connecting piping and was lifted approximately 9feet into the air

by the momentum transferred from the waterhammer.

Calculations of the mechanical deformation of the vessel indicate thatabout 12 percent of the prompt energy release or 4.7 percent of the totalnuclear release was converted into mechanical energy (Ref. 52).

In each instance, under differing circumstances, a hot molten materialfell, dropped, or spewed into a mass of cooler liquid and destructivepressure generation resulted. The complex mechanisms triggering thistype of reaction are not completely understood.

It can be seen how quickly a nuclear reactor can go out of control.Within 30 milliseconds, enormous power output is reached and if controlwas lost, a Chernobyl type event or a nuclear fission explosion wouldtake place. In the Idaho SL-1 incident described above, the release of50MWsecs of energy in only 30msec is an instantaneous power outputof 1.66 billion Watts. These three events were relatively mild andcontrolled - one can only imagine what would happen if a reactor wassent critical intentionally or if its coolant systems were deliberatelydestroyed.

In the case of the WTC, it seems that this is indeed what happened. Thereactor core “went critical” and entered an uncontrolled fission chainreaction. We deduce this from the very large quantity of fission products

Ground Zero 153

The China Syndrome

and the violent nature of the explosions detected, both seismically andin the visual characteristics of the blast, akin to an underground nuclearexplosion.

In the case of Chernobyl, it was an event like this which blew the 2000tonne lid off the core and contaminated much of western Europe withradioactive fallout.

There have been several other known core meltdowns with nuclearreactors: Chernobyl in 1986, Three Mile Island in 1979, SL-1 at thereactor test station in Idaho in 1961, EBR-1 at the same place in 1955,the Fermi fast breeder reactor in 1966 which it is said almost destroyedDetroit. Brown’s Ferry nearly melted in 1985. How many there havebeen outside the USA where information is almost impossible to obtainis anyone’s guess, not counting the host of lesser nuclear accidents thathave occurred.

To this, we now have to add the certainty of further clandestine nuclearreactors, unknown to the IAEA or national regulatory bodies.

The 1993 WTC Truck Bomb

Earlier in this report, we commented on the location of the centrifugalchiller units at the bottom of the WTC basement. These produced chilledwater for the air conditioning system in the WTC complex. We notedthat the amount of cooling equipment seemed to be almost twice asmuch as would be expected for the area of office space it had to serve.

In 1993 a truck filled with urea nitrate was exploded in the car park onthe B-2 level under the WTC. This caused extensive damage and putout of commission the 7 seven thousand tonne centrifugal chillers,located in the three floor high space from level B-3 to B-6 (see Figure 55on page 132).

It is possible that this was an earlier attempt to destroy the entire WTCsite by destroying the coolant system for the nuclear reactors furtherbelow. By instantly destroying the cooling system, an emergency wouldbe created giving the reactor personnel perhaps only seconds in whichto react to prevent a catastrophic power excursion. The fact that this didnot occur indicates that there may have been a separate emergencycooling system, also sourced from the Hudson River - or perhaps thereactor was shut down for maintenance, giving them more time to react.We will probably never know.

During the second attack in 2001, the explosions in the basement whichwent off when the plane hit may have been used to make sure of thejob, destroying both the primary cooling system and the backup ECCSand decay heat cooling systems.

Who would have had knowledge concerning the existence of thisclandestine nuclear power station and its security arrangements andwould be able to penetrate that security to critically sabotage two

154 Ground Zero

The China Syndrome

reactors, synchronised with aerial diversions that served to act as acover for the cause of the towers’ collapse.

7.5 Evidence of Anomalous Facilities

Evidence of Underground Construction

Is there any direct evidence for the existence of these undergroundfacilities under Manhattan, apparently so extensive that they requiredtheir own power supply from two nuclear reactors?

An intriguing photograph was taken during the collapse of the WTC fromthe north side of the site, looking due south. The photograph shows thedust cloud from the collapse of a tower and on the left hand side we cansee a street covered with dust but now clear of active clouds. Thisindicates that this must be the second collapse in progress.

In the middle of the photograph at the front and on the right hand sidehowever, can be seen two powerful upwellings of dust clouds fromindependent sources in or on the ground.

FIGURE 61 UNDERGROUND UPWELLINGS

The source on the right in front of the office block with the stepped roofis particularly clear. The source in the middle also looks like a denseupwelling, whereas the dust cloud behind it filling the street as it flowsdown from the WTC is much less dense.

These upwellings are some distance from the WTC itself. Assumingthere was an extensive underground facility or small city underManhattan, there would have been a certain number of air vents and

Ground Zero 155

Evidence of Anomalous Facilities

other exits to the surface. When the reactors exploded, the force of theblast would have also been channelled through the undergroundcorridors and hollow spaces, forcing dust and debris up into theatmosphere through these exits.

These upwellings could be showing the location of other entrances oraccess points to the underground facility. They show strong dust andsmoke sources at ground level, several blocks away from the WTC.

Evidence of Advanced Technology

So far we have presented extensive forensic evidence that clandestinenuclear reactors were installed under the WTC. If you like, we have thebullet, which means there must have been a gun, but the gun itselfdisintegrated when it was fired.

Was there any other evidence before the event that anomalous oradvanced technology was present at the WTC? Because whatever wasthe nature of the nuclear reactors under the WTC, they were definitely ofan unconventional or advanced type. We know this for two reasons:

1.

The large amount of Zinc produced, atypical of nuclear explosions.

2.

The fact that hundreds of tonnes of Uranium could undergo fission, proven by the hundreds of tonnes of Barium and Strontium, but without destroying an area for fifty miles around New York.

When the WTC was constructed, a famous “metal sculpture” wascommissioned from the German artist Fritz König. It was installed in theplaza between the towers, where it rotated once every 24 hours.

FIGURE 62 KÖNIG’S SPHERE IN WTC PLAZA

König called it the “Great Spherical Caryatid”. A caryatid is a femaleversion of Atlas, who carried the world on his shoulders. The sculpturewas supposed to signify world peace through commerce. “König’sSphere” as it became known survived the destruction of the towers

156 Ground Zero

The China Syndrome

largely intact and was re-installed in Battery Park in 2002. The originalheight of the sphere was 7.62 metres, which is a significant harmonicnumber in wave mechanics.

In the light of what we now know, that advanced nuclear reactors wereinstalled beneath the towers, this supposedly bronze and steel “metalsculpture” that managed to survive pulverisation by thousands oftonnes of falling steel and concrete, becomes an intriguing object. Atfirst glance, it looks more like a functional technical artefact than a pieceof abstract modern sculpture. It seems to have little to do with “peacethrough commerce” and more the function of a collecting device at thefocus of a parabolic reflector or other wave concentrator.

7.6 The WTC Memorial

After the WTC collapse, an international competition was held to selectan architectural design for a permanent memorial to mark the WTC site.

The winning design - and a number of other entries - have as theircentral feature a sunken pool of water covering the footprint of eachtower.

Visitors will descend through a passageway to the side of the pool,which they can then look at through a veil of falling water, cascadingdown the sides of the sunken enclosure.

Water is one of the best radiation absorbers. It is also inconspicuous.Covering the footprint of each tower with water and protecting visitorswith a curtain of water is an effective way to contain at least the directradiation emitted upwards by the remains of the reactor cores whichmust still be down there, buried 100 metres below the ground.

FIGURE 63 WTC MEMORIAL

The artist’s impression shows the deeply sunken square pools that willcover the base of each tower.

Ground Zero 157

Effects of A Nuclear Explosion on New York

7.7 Effects of A Nuclear Explosion on

New York

What will be the long term effects of this clandestine nuclear explosionon New York and its inhabitants?

The best indication comes from the testimony of Dr. Henry Kelly,President of the Federation of American Scientists before the SenateCommittee on Foreign Relations on March 6, 2002

1

. Dr Kelly presentedthree hypothetical scenarios to illustrate the likely effects of aradiological attack on a US city, releasing radioactive material withoutusing a nuclear explosion itself.

Dr. Kelly gives an example of a dirty bomb exploded at the tip ofManhattan, consisting of just one cobalt “pencil” used for foodirradiation. We will quote from that example here.

“Now imagine if a single piece of radioactive cobalt from a foodirradiation plant was dispersed by an explosion at the

lower tip ofManhattan

. Typically, each of these cobalt "pencils" is about one inchin diameter and one foot long, with hundreds of such pieces oftenbeing found in the same facility. Admittedly, acquisition of such materialis less likely than in the previous scenario, but we still consider theresults, depicted in figure two. Again, no immediate evacuation wouldbe necessary, but in this case, an area of approximately one-thousand square kilometres, extending over three states, would becontaminated. Over an area of about three hundred typical cityblocks, there would be a

one-in-ten risk of death from cancer

forresidents living in the contaminated area for forty years. The entireborough of Manhattan would be so contaminated that anyone livingthere would have a one-in-a-hundred chance of dying from cancercaused by the residual radiation.

It would be decades before the citywas inhabitable again, and demolition might be necessary

.”

Dr. Kelly presented the following diagram to illustrate his meaning:

1. http://www.fas.org/ssp/docs/kelly_testimony_030602.pdf

158 Ground Zero

The China Syndrome

FIGURE 64 EFFECT OF ONE COBALT PENCIL ON NEW YORK

Dr. Kelly then went on to show what area of Manhattan would becontaminated by this one cobalt pencil to the same degree as the areaaffected by Chernobyl in 1986.

“For comparison, consider the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, in which aSoviet nuclear power plant went through a

meltdown

. Radiation wasspread over a vast area, and the region surrounding the plant waspermanently closed. In our current example, t

he area contaminatedto the same level of radiation as that region would cover much ofManhattan

, as shown in figure three. Furthermore, near Chernobyl, alarger area has been subject to periodic controls on human use suchas restrictions on food, clothing, and time spent outdoors. In thecurrent example, the equivalent area extends fifteen miles.”

“To summarize..... materials like caesium, cobalt, iridium, and

strontium

(gamma emitters) would all produce similar results. No immediateevacuation or medical attention would be necessary, but long-termcontamination would be render large urban areas useless, resulting insevere economic and personal hardship.”

Ground Zero 159

Historical Radiation Exposure Experiments

This is the diagram Dr. Kelly presented, showing the area contaminatedby one Cobalt pencil to the same degree as Chernobyl if a dirty bombwas to occur at the tip of lower Manhattan:

FIGURE 65 ONE COBALT PENCIL - EQUIVALENT CHERNOBYL EFFECT

However, what has happened to New York is far, far worse. A nuclearreactor - indeed two nuclear reactors - have undergone a core meltdownand exploded at the tip of lower Manhattan, contaminating the entire cityand surrounding area to the same degree as Chernobyl. Not one Cobaltpencil but thousands of Cobalt pencils.

New York City should be evacuated and much of Manhattan should bedemolished. What is to be done about this enormous crime againsthumanity?

7.8 Historical Radiation Exposure

Experiments

Lest we think that the US Military-Industrial Complex would nevercommit such a crime against “its own people”, the deliberate andclandestine exposure of US and other citizens to radioactivity andradiation is in fact a routine practice. Since the Second World War, the

160 Ground Zero

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US Government has deliberately exposed and contaminated largenumbers of its citizens systematically, both civilian and military, withsome of the most dangerous and toxic substances known to man.

It is now well known how thousands of US and British military personnelwere ordered to walk towards the nuclear fireball after atomic weaponstests in New Mexico and Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. The purposewas purely to see what effect the radiation would have on them.

In the 1960s, plutonium was injected into pregnant women - again, justto see what would happen.

In November 1986, the US Congressional Sub Committee on EnergyConservation and Power released a report under Congressman EdwardMarkey entitled “American Nuclear Guinea Pigs: Three Decades ofRadiation Experiments on US Citizens”

1

.

The report detailed the systematic injection and administration ofradioactive isotopes and compounds to US citizens since the 1940s tosee when and at what level damaging (irreversible) effects would occur.

In 1994, radioactive substances were still being surreptitiouslyadministered to prisoners in New York penitentiaries.

These experiments are redolent of the barbaric practices of JosephMengele and his Japanese counterparts on human victims during theSecond World War. Indeed, given what has come to light aboutOperation Paperclip, the mass transfer of Nazi war criminal scientists tothe USA after the Second World War, plus the recruitment by the CIA ofnumerous Nazis, one could say it is merely a seamless continuation ofthose practices.

The deliberate contamination of New York with radioactive fallout is farfrom being exceptional. It is simply one in a long line of radioactivecontamination experiments stretching back over 60 years. These“experiments” are being continued today with the widespread use ofDepleted Uranium munitions in Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

To these individuals, the administration and release of radioactivecontamination against the population is routine. It is Standard OperatingProcedure.

To borrow another quotation used by A. Stanley Thompson:

“God rest you merry Innocents“While innocence endures”

Ogden Nash

1. See the National Security Archive at George Washington State University www.gws.edu

Ground Zero 161

8 Conclusion

This report has presented indisputable and overwhelming evidence thatthe Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre were destroyed by theexplosion and core meltdown of at least two nuclear reactors.

The key irrefutable evidence is the presence of radioactive fallout in thedust residue. This “smoking gun” evidence lays the framework for thenunderstanding all the other extraordinary physical anomalies - theintense volcanic subterranean heat which persisted for months, literallyboiling away concrete, the seismic spikes characteristic of undergroundblasting, the free fall instant collapse of the buildings and the eruptiveejection of dust and rubble high into the atmosphere and overManhattan.

There is no doubt that this was one of the single worst atrocities evercommitted by individuals intent on terrorising the people of the world.

The question is - who are these terrorisers? Who could have knownabout these clandestine nuclear reactors 80 metres under Manhattan?Who could have gained access to them? Who could have co-ordinatedtheir deliberate meltdown with the crashing of two commercial aircraft (ifthey really were standard commercial airliners) into the buildings? Whydeliberately tell the residents of New York that the dust was completelysafe when even simple asbestos precautions could have greatlyreduced exposure?

To ask these questions is to answer them. Only elements of the USMilitary Industrial Complex and so called “shadow government” couldhave orchestrated this depraved and heinous act of

AgentProvocateurism

, from which has flowed an unprecedented War of Terroragainst the world.

Cui bono?

162 Ground Zero

Conclusion

Ground Zero 163

Appendix A:The Complexity of Fission

Nuclear fission is even more complex than the various pathwaysdescribed in Chapter 3. The following schematic diagram shows thatwhen an atom of Uranium undergoes fission, into only two fissionfragments or daughter nuclei, these can span the entire Periodic Tablebelow Uranium from Thorium to Helium.

FIGURE 66

Number of Protons

Num

ber o

f Neu

tron

s

30 40 50 60 70

50

60

70

80

90

100

Nuclear Fission Products of UraniumSchematic Diagram Showing the

High

Medium

Low

Lowest

Probability of FormationFission Fragment - High Atomic Weight

Fission Fragment - Low Atomic Weight

164 Ground Zero

Appendix A: The Complexity of Fission

However, as we have seen, in a very energetic nuclear event - such asan atomic bomb - we do not just see two fission fragments per Uraniumatom but three or more - the daughter nuclei are themselvesdisintegrated by the intense neutron flux into smaller atoms. The heavierfission fragment in particular - Xe, Rn, Th, Pb, etc. - will in turn fissioninto lighter elements.

Something like this is what created the very high concentration of Zinc,so closely linked to the concentration of Barium.

You can appreciate that there is no public data available on what thedistribution of elements produced would be from a nuclear explosion.Such “nuclear test data” is classified and would vary greatly dependingon the conditions of the explosion, the type of bomb etc. The schematicdiagram is for two fission fragments only and applies to the relatively lowenergy fission of uranium in a civilian power reactor.

What can be said is that such extra levels of fission will be accompaniedby an intense neutron flux and it may unfortunately be stretchingcoincidence too far to believe that the particularly high concentration ofZinc - the preferred option for the military “doomsday device” - arosepurely by chance.

Quantity of Uranium in Reactor Core

Several times in the report, we have given a very broad estimate of theamount of Uranium that must have been originally present in eachreactor. This has been derived from the concentration of fallout -Barium, Strontium, Zinc - in the dust.

For non-chemists, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that 100tonnes of Uranium would produce 100 tonnes of Strontium etc.

Things are a bit more complex than that. As you now know, each atomof Uranium can split into two or even three fission fragments in manydifferent ways. A wide range of fission pathways is followed and onlysome of the Uranium in the core will go down each path.

So taking Strontium again, the mean concentration that the USGSmeasured in the dust was 726ppm. This means that if there were200,000 tonnes of dust produced by the destruction of the buildings,and we know the USGS found high levels of Strontium in all the samplesthey measured all over Manhattan, we can assume that the total amountof Strontium produced was:

200,000 tonnes x 726ppm

In SI units this equals

2 x 10

8

kgs x 0.000726 = 145,200 kgs (or 145 tonnes).

Now what we really do not know is - how much of the Uranium originallypresent fissioned through the Strontium pathway? Looking back at

Ground Zero 165


Figure 2 on page 7, you see two of the main pathways, going throughStrontium and Barium. As we know, there are many, many others.

The main thing to realise here is that the lower the proportion of theoriginal Uranium that fissioned through Strontium, the more Uraniumthere must have been there in total in the first place.

If all the Uranium just followed the two Barium/ Strontium pathways,then 50% of the Uranium atoms present would have fissioned throughStrontium to produce 145 tonnes of Strontium. If only 10% of the originalUranium produces 145 tonnes of Strontium, then there must have beena lot more Uranium present.

But how much Uranium produces one tonne of Strontium? The answeris not one tonne! This is where we have to bring in the concept of the

mole

.

One atom of Uranium splits into two pieces to produce one atom ofStrontium and one atom of Barium. But an atom of Uranium and anatom of Strontium do not weigh the same. The Uranium isotope thatfissions has an atomic weight of 235 - the Strontium isotope has anatomic weight of 90.

Chemists discovered that 90 grammes of Strontium or 235 grammes ofUranium or 16 grammes of Oxygen all contain the same number ofatoms. This makes sense since each atom has a different weight - sothe weight of that element in grammes equal to the atomic weight of theelement will contain the same number of atoms.

That number is a constant (Avogadro’s Number = 6.022 x 10

23

mol

-1

)and the weight of an element that contains that number of atoms iscalled a mole.

Simply think of it like this - chemical reactions and nuclear fission occurbetween atoms (or molecules etc.). 1 atom of Uranium produces 1 atomof Strontium. But 1 atom of Uranium weighs 235 atomic units while 1atom of Strontium weighs only 90 atomic units (the other 145 atomicunits go into a Barium atom and free neutrons).

Since 1 atom of

235

U weighs 235 atomic units and 1 atom of

90

Sr weighs90 atomic units, 235 grammes of Uranium has the same number ofatoms in it as 90 grammes of Strontium.

1 mole of Uranium weighs 235g and 1 mole of strontium weighs 90g.

To produce 145 tonnes of Strontium therefore, there must have beenoriginally

(EQ 12)

145 ×23590

= 380 tonnes of Uranium

166 Ground Zero


But this was only the Uranium to produce Strontium (and its associatedBarium).

If 50% of the Uranium fissioned through Strontium, then the totalamount of Uranium would have been 760 tonnes. If only 30% of theUranium fissioned through Strontium, then there would have beennearly 1300 tonnes of Uranium originally.

What this illustrates beyond doubt is that the high concentration ofradioactive fallout in all of the dust means the only possible source wasa nuclear reactor - not a small bomb containing only tens ofkilogrammes of fissile material at the most.

ground zero: the nuclear demolition of the world trade centre

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